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User lobbying amongst high-growth tech startups: the next evolution of constituency building

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USER LOBBYING AMONGST HIGH-GROWTH TECHNOLOGY STARTUPS: THE NEXT
EVOLUTION OF CONSTITUENCY BUILDING

By

Maurice J. Murphy

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOHY
(BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION)

May 2022

Copyright 2022 Maurice J. Murphy

ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation would not have been possible without the support of numerous people
over the course of my doctoral journey the past 5 years. First and foremost, I would like to take
this opportunity to thank my advisors, Peer Fiss and Nan Jia. Peer and Nan have provided
immeasurable academic support during my time at USC. They have believed in me and
encouraged me from the very beginning. I am truly appreciative of them as academics, amazing
mentors, and quality human beings. I would like to thank the rest of my dissertation committee—
Kyle Mayer, Edward Walker, and Ben Graham—for their astute feedback on my dissertation
research, as well as for their support and guidance during the academic job market and
throughout my PhD program. Additionally, I would like to thank the entire USC Marshall
Department of Management and Organization (i.e., faculty, staff, and doctoral students) for their
dedication to me as a doctoral student/colleague, encouragement, and thoughtful feedback and
support over the years. I would also like to my research assistant team (i.e., Zachary Hrenko,
Martin Kurucz, Paige Malkow, and Riley Sullivan) for aiding me in building my novel unicorn
user lobbying dataset. Lastly, I would be remiss not to thank my beautiful family for their love,
support, and sacrifice during the pursuit of my PhD. I owe them a massive debt of gratitude.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................................................... ii
LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................................................................... v
LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................................................... vi
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................................ vii
CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................. 1
DISSERTATION PURPOSE ...................................................................................................................................... 4
DISSERTATION OUTLINE AND SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS ............................................................................... 5
Chapter 2 – Elucidating Constituency Building as an Evolving Corporate Political Strategy: A Comprehensive
Literature Review ................................................................................................................................................. 5
Chapter 3 – User Lobbying Amongst High-Growth Technology Startups: The Next Evolution of Constituency
Building ................................................................................................................................................................ 6
Chapter 4 – Future Directions for User Lobbying and Constituency Building Research .................................... 7
Chapter 5 – Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 8
CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................................................................... 8
CHAPTER 2 - ELUCIDATING CONSTITUENCY BUILDING AS AN EVOLVING CORPORATE
POLITICAL STRATEGY: AN INTEGRATIVE REVIEW ................................................................................. 10
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................... 10
CORPORATE POLITICAL ACTIVITIES ................................................................................................................ 14
An Overview ....................................................................................................................................................... 14
A Typology of Corporate Political Strategies and Tactics ................................................................................. 15
Corporate Political Activity Literature Reviews ................................................................................................ 17
CONSTITUENCY BUILDING: A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ....................................................................... 20
Defining Constituency Building ......................................................................................................................... 23
(1) Structural Antecedents of Constituency Building ......................................................................................... 25
(2) Two Approaches to Constituency Building .................................................................................................. 26
(3) Individual or Collective Constituency Building Campaigns ........................................................................ 34
(4) Constituency Building Tactics ...................................................................................................................... 36
CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................................ 64
CHAPTER 3 - THE NEW AGE OF USER LOBBYING: EXPLORING CONSTITUENCY BUILDING
AMONGST HIGH GROWTH-TECHNOLOGY STARTUPS ............................................................................. 65
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................... 65
LITERATURE REVIEW: ......................................................................................................................................... 70
POLITICAL MARKETS, STARTUPS, AND STRATEGIC ACTION FIELDS ......................................................... 70
Political Markets ................................................................................................................................................. 70
Field Theory ....................................................................................................................................................... 73
THEORETICAL MODEL AND HYPOTHESES ...................................................................................................... 77
Entrepreneurial Startups and Nonmarket Strategy ............................................................................................. 77
Environmental Factors, Regulatory Uncertainty, and User Lobbying ............................................................... 79
Leveraging Market Capabilities for User Lobbying ........................................................................................... 90
METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................................................................. 101
Sample .............................................................................................................................................................. 101

iv
Dependent Variable .......................................................................................................................................... 103
Independent Variables ...................................................................................................................................... 107
Control Variables .............................................................................................................................................. 110
Estimation Strategy ........................................................................................................................................... 113
RESULTS ............................................................................................................................................................... 113
Summary of Results .......................................................................................................................................... 120
DISCUSSION ........................................................................................................................................................ 121
Implications ...................................................................................................................................................... 123
CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................................................... 125
CHAPTER 4 - FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR USER LOBBYING AND CONSTITUENCY BUILDING
RESEARCH .............................................................................................................................................................. 127
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................. 127
User Lobbying .................................................................................................................................................. 127
Exploring and Elucidating the Corporate Grassroots Mobilization Process .................................................... 130
Updating the Typology of Corporate Constituency Building Tactics .............................................................. 132
Constituency Building in the International Context ......................................................................................... 135
CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................................................... 136
CHAPTER 5 - CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... 137
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................. 137
EVOLUTION OF CONSTITUENCY BUILDING RESEARCH ............................................................................ 137
PROMISING AREAS OF FUTURE RESEARCH .................................................................................................. 139
CONTRIBUTIONS ................................................................................................................................................ 141
IMPORTANCE OF IMPROVING CROSS-DISCIPLINARY RESEARCH ............................................................ 142
CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................................................... 142
REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................................................... 144

v
LIST OF TABLES

TABLE 1: REVIEWED STUDIES BY TOPIC ......................................................................................... 22
TABLE 2: DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS .............................................................................................. 114
TABLE 3: CORRELATIONS AND DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS ............................................................. 115
TABLE 4: NEGATIVE-BINOMIAL REGRESSIONS WITH RANDOM EFFECTS ...................................... 116
TABLE 5: NEGATIVE-BINOMIAL REGRESSIONS WITH RANDOM EFFECTS AND IRRS ..................... 117

vi
LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE 1: CORPORATE CONSTITUENCY BUILDING REVIEW FRAMEWORK ..................................... 23
FIGURE 2: CORPORATE CONSTITUENCY BUILDING PROCESS MODEL ............................................. 38

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ABSTRACT

User lobbying—defined as a technology-mediated approach to constituency building, wherein
firms employ information communications technologies (ICTs) to politically mobilize their
customers and/or platform users to advance their public and/or regulatory policy interests—is an
important and growing phenomenon that has recently emerged upon the corporate political
scene. In illuminating this emergent tech-mediated constituency building tactic, this dissertation
conducts the first comprehensive review of the constituency building literature, accounting for
the historical development of the research on this specific corporate political strategy across
various disciplines (i.e., strategy, sociology, political science, marketing, and public relations). It
also highlights the extent to which academic work in this domain substantially lags behind the
attention that this political strategy continues to garner both within traditional and social media,
as well as throughout society. Second, this dissertation explores the prominence and antecedents
associated with user lobbying amongst approximately 300 high-growth tech startups (i.e.,
unicorns) headquartered in the United States. My findings from this novel dataset – which
comprises print media coverage of user lobbying campaigns – indicate that approximately 40 of
the unicorns in my sample have utilized user lobbying at least once since their inception and that
disruptive, sharing economy, and platform-based ventures are more likely to employ this tactic
than their counterparts not possessing these characteristics. Third, building on its comprehensive
review of the constituency building literature and its examination of the antecedents of user
lobbying amongst high-performing tech startups, this work provides a comprehensive future
research agenda for the literatures on user lobbying and constituency building.

1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

“Leading technology companies are increasingly soliciting their users to take political
action on their behalf to defend controversial business models from regulation, support
new programs, and promote their moral values in active political battles. Many of the
companies inserting politics into their user experience operate popular social platforms
themselves. In directing a flood of political attention toward their targets, these web
companies are reshaping attention online so that it flows less like a stream, and more like
a canal.”

As the quote above from Matt Stempeck – a leading enthusiast of civic technology – in
his 2015 Harvard Business Review article demonstrates, a nascent form of technology-mediated
constituency building has begun to take hold amongst leading tech firms, wherein they are
employing their apps, platforms, blogs, websites, social media, and instant messaging to
politically mobilize their grassroots stakeholders (i.e., customers and platform users) in
advancing their public and regulatory policy agenda. The watershed moment in the diffusion of
this political tactic was the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act (i.e., SOPA and
PIPA) in the US House of Representatives and the Senate, which sought to legislate away the
internet freedoms that have been enjoined upon firms and citizens. In response to these two bills,
internet technology firms Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Reddit, Tumblr, and Twitter (to name a
few), were able to use their information communications technologies (ICTs) to convince many
of their stakeholders to contact their elected representatives (in the US House of Representatives
and Senate) to oppose (and ultimately kill) SOPA and PIPA (Ngak, 2012).
Since the Battle for the Internet, high-growth entrepreneurial technology startups have
increasingly been engaging in this new tech-mediated approach to constituency building. From
their inception, high-performing startups like Uber and Lyft have been battling incumbent taxi
medallions, with their army of users, in cities around the US to stave off legislation and

2
regulation that would preclude their ability to operate in the market. Home-sharing startup
Airbnb has continuously mobilized its customers and users in major US municipalities – to
protect its right to exist – in response to political and regulatory targeting by the hotel industry
and its allies within legislative chambers, regulatory bodies, and social movement organizations
(SMOs). While, at the state level, controversial high-growth startups like Juul, online fantasy
sports firms (Fanduel and DraftKings), and sharing economy companies (e.g., DoorDash,
InstaCart, Postmates, etc.) have been persuading their customers and users to lobby their elected
representatives and/or regulators to safeguard the policy interests of their startup benefactors
from the political attacks of established firms within their given industries. This ever-present
political phenomenon, which Stempeck (2015) refers to as user lobbying (wherein firms
politically mobilize their customers and platforms users to forward their policy interests), is of
significant and growing interest to business practitioners, journalists, and academics alike;
however, scholarly coverage (and examination) of this increasingly prominent and important
constituency building tactic, has sadly lagged substantially behind that of business practitioners
and journalists.
This lack of academic attention afforded to the political tactic of user lobbying seems to
mirror the dearth of scholarly consideration paid to the political strategy, constituency building,
of which user lobbying is a tactic. Albeit a decent amount of research on constituency building
began being conducted in the 1980s, was briefly revisited in the early 2000s, and was revived
recently predominantly by sociologists and political scientists beginning in the 2010s – with only
a few strategy scholars examining this political tactic recently (e.g., Jia & Mayer, 2016) – the
amount of research on this particular political strategy (i.e., constituency building) pales in
comparison to the literature on lobbying and political donations (the two other predominate types

3
of corporate political strategy) (Hillman & Hitt, 1999).
Heretofore, the corporate political strategy (CPS) literature has shown that of the three
prominent CPSs (i.e., lobbying, political donations, and constituency building), from the
perspective of legislators and their staffs, constituency building is arguably the most effective
way to politically influence legislators (Baysinger et al., 1985; Hillman & Hitt, 1999; Keim,
1985; Lord, 2000a). As constituency building scholars explain, by politically mobilizing their
grassroots stakeholders, firms are able to indirectly pressure policymakers who are oftentimes
motivated by re-election (Baysinger et al., 1985; Keim, 1985). As such, elected officials and
their staffs are more inclined to enact policies that are in-line with firm political priorities, on
widely salient policy issues, when they receive direct feedback from their constituents (i.e., firm
mobilized stakeholders), who ultimately determine the politician’s tenure within their current
political post (Lord, 2000a, 2000b).
The corporate constituency building literature has also demonstrated that certain
firmographic capabilities are essential when using this CPS. For instance, scholars have argued
that firms need sincere, credible, deep, and broad-based grassroots political support to effectively
mobilize stakeholders (Lord, 2003). Researchers have also asserted that having a large employee
(Heath et al., 1995; Hertel-Fernandez, 2016, 2018; Hillman & Hitt, 1999) or customer (Lord,
2003) base is important to effectively implement constituency building. The ability to publicly
frame a policy position – whether the framing is accurate or not – in a way that coheres with that
of a given public sentiment pool is also important (Murray et al., 2016). Whilst Walker (2012,
2014), has evinced that constituency building is shaped by a firm’s degree of direct lobbying
(Walker, 2012), the extent to which a company appears as a customer of a public affairs
consultancy, the degree to which a firm is embroiled in public controversies and protests, as well

4
as the industry in which a firm is embedded (Walker, 2014). With respect to the topic of this
dissertation, Walker (2014) has also found that tech firms (i.e., large S&P 500 tech companies)
engage in a greater amount of corporate grassroots mobilization than comparable firms in other
industries.
Despite these key findings, within the existing body of scholarly work on corporate
constituency building, the paucity of research on this ever-present and important political
strategy (relative to lobbying and campaign contributions) could potentially be attributable to the
emergence of and ease of access to publicly available data on corporate political donations,
lobbying expenditures, and (most recently) public comments, which have commanded the lion’s
share of empirical attention from CPS researchers over the last couple of decades. These data are
now readily available at the federal and state levels. It could also potentially be attributed to CPS
researcher’s lack of ability to and growing frustration with attempting to empirically test
theoretical assumptions as it relates to constituency building – although a few scholars have
recently found their way around this challenge by adopting a qualitative empirical approach (e.g.,
Uzunca et al., 2018). Whatever the reason, it is clear that scholars of CPS have given insufficient
strategic consideration to constituency building (with respect to both theory and empirics), its
historical evolution, and the future trajectory of this increasingly important CPS literature.

DISSERTATION PURPOSE

Thus, the purpose of this dissertation entitled “User Lobbying Amongst High-Growth
Technology Startups: The Next Evolution of Constituency Building” is three-fold. First, it
conducts the first comprehensive review of the constituency building literature, accounting for
the historical development of the research on this specific corporate political strategy across

5
various disciplines (i.e., strategy, sociology, political science, marketing, and public relations). It
also highlights the extent to which academic work in this domain substantially lags behind the
attention that this political strategy continues to garner both within traditional and social media,
as well as throughout society. Second, this dissertation introduces and explores the emergence of
a nascent form of tech-mediated constituency building (or corporate grassroots political
mobilization) prominent amongst high-growth tech startups, which tech enthusiasts have taken to
calling user lobbying. Third, building on its comprehensive review of the constituency building
literature and its examination of the antecedents of user lobbying amongst high-growth
technology startups, this work provides a future research agenda for the constituency building
literature (as one of three important corporate political strategies) and user lobbying (as one of
the most recent and preeminent corporate constituency building tactics).

DISSERTATION OUTLINE AND SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS

Chapter 2 – Elucidating Constituency Building as an Evolving Corporate Political
Strategy: A Comprehensive Literature Review

In general, the second chapter of my dissertation provides a detailed review of the
academic literature on constituency building and synergizes constituency building research
across the social sciences. It asserts that over the last 3 decades, we have seen an increased
willingness on the part of firms to employ constituency building as a means to induce the
political mobilization of their grassroots stakeholders. The rapid diffusion of this political
strategy is of great importance to management scholars in that it has clear implications on both
management research, as well as the operationalization of democracy itself. Hence, in this
chapter, I provide the first detailed review of the academic literature on constituency building.
Second, I synergize constituency building research across the following fields: strategy,

6
sociology, political science, marketing, and public relations. Third, I propose a common
language that can be used across the aforementioned disciplines in discussing this political
strategy. Fourth, I elucidate the corporate grassroots mobilization process (the most researched
corporate constituency building tactic examined in the literature). Fifth, I examine the
implications of technology on corporate grassroots mobilization campaigns. Sixth, I articulate
the need for an update of Hillman and Hitt’s (1999) Typology of Corporate Constituency
Building Tactics given the emergence of tech-mediated corporate grassroots mobilization. And
finally, I explain the ways in which firms are leveraging their market-based resources and
capabilities as political (i.e., constituency building) capabilities.

Chapter 3 – User Lobbying Amongst High-Growth Technology Startups: The Next
Evolution of Constituency Building

In Chapter 3, I affirm that the political activities of high-growth technology startups are
of significant and increasing interest to academics and practitioners alike. Of particular relevance
in this regard is user lobbying; an emergent form of constituency building wherein firms
politically mobilize their customers and platform users through the use of ICTs. Anecdotal
evidence indicates that while tech firms of varying sizes have been relatively prominent in
adopting and implementing this nascent corporate political strategy, disruptive, platform-based,
high-growth tech startups (in particular) appear to be most inclined to use it (Stempeck, 2015;
Tusk, 2018). This raises a very important question: why do some high-growth tech startups
attempt to mobilize their customers and/or platform users more often than others?
Using print media coverage of user lobbying efforts by high-growth tech startups, I
examine the extent to which a firm’s disruptiveness, sharing economy business model, and
market-based capabilities (i.e., business-to-consumer or B2C and platform capabilities) affect its

7
propensity to engage in this political tactic. This novel measure is the first of its kind to directly
measure constituency building as opposed to using firm self-reports or some proxy thereof. To
test my hypotheses, I use a sample of approximately 300 unicorn firms (i.e., high-growth tech
startups with valuation of at least $1 billion) headquartered in the United States. My initial
findings from this novel dataset indicate that approximately 40 of the unicorns in my sample
have employed user lobbying at least once since their inception. The results also suggest that
disruptive, sharing economy, and platform-based unicorns have a greater propensity to utilize
user lobbying than their counterparts not possessing these characteristics. In addition to these
findings, this work theoretically advances constituency building research through combining
insights from the political markets literature and field theory to introduce the notion of
transforming political markets.

Chapter 4 – Future Directions for User Lobbying and Constituency Building Research

Chapter 4 of this dissertation, builds on the robust literature review of Chapter 2 and the
empirical exploration of the antecedents of user lobbying amongst high-growth tech startups
presented in Chapter 3 in charting a course for a comprehensive future research agenda for
constituency building (one of three essential, yet academically overlooked, corporate political
strategies) and user lobbying (one of the most recent and eminent corporate constituency
building tactics). In particular, the future research agenda proposed in this chapter focuses on (1)
further developing our comprehension of user lobbying (the emergent tech-mediated form of
constituency building elucidated in this dissertation), (2) extending our understanding of the
nuances associated with the corporate grassroots mobilization process, (3) the importance of
updating Hillman and Hitt’s (1999) Typology of Corporate Constituency Building Tactics given

8
the emergence of user lobbying, and (4) the internationalization of constituency building
(particularly user lobbying), and its implications on corporate political strategizing and
democracy throughout the world.

Chapter 5 – Conclusion

In this chapter, I briefly summarize the development and evolution of the constituency
building literature, as well as the progress that has been made from the early works of Baysinger
(1984), Baysinger et al. (1985), Keim (1985), Keim et al. (1984), Keim & Zeithaml (1986), and
Sethi (1981) to the contemporary explorations of Walker (2009, 2012, 2014), Hertel-Fernandez
(2016, 2017, 2018), and Jia and Mayer (2016). I reaffirm the promising areas of research within
constituency building that will help in furthering this essential domain of academic inquiry.
Additionally, I discuss the relevance and contributions of constituency building research to the
corporate political strategy, nonmarket strategy, and general strategy literatures. And finally, I
consider how continued cross-disciplinary research collaborations with scholars from the fields
of sociology, political science, marketing, public relations, and ethics will aid strategy scholars in
better ascertaining constituency building as a complex corporate political phenomenon.

CONCLUSION

In summary, this dissertation is an important contribution to the corporate political
strategy, social movements, stakeholder management, and entrepreneurship literatures in that it
helps to advance research on constituency building (in general) and constituency building
amongst high-growth tech startups (in particular). It achieves this goal, by providing a detailed
examination of the evolution of the existent literature on constituency building (as a corporate

9
political strategy), by introducing user lobbying (a nascent and ever-prominent form of tech-
mediated constituency building) to the corporate political strategy, social movement, and
entrepreneurship literatures, by elucidating the antecedents of user lobbying amongst high-
growth tech startups, and by proposing a future research agenda for this ever important domain
of inquiry.

10
CHAPTER 2
ELUCIDATING CONSTITUENCY BUILDING AS AN EVOLVING CORPORATE
POLITICAL STRATEGY: AN INTEGRATIVE REVIEW

INTRODUCTION

Since the 1980s, we have witnessed a precipitous increase in the willingness and ability
of firms to politically mobilize their stakeholders at the grassroots level (Keim, 1985; Lyon &
Maxwell, 2004; Walker, 2009). This phenomenon has taken many different forms. For example,
in the 1990s pharmaceutical firms worked with patient medical advocacy organizations to
mobilize sympathetic patients on issues related to price controls and patent revocation (Lord,
2003). In 2009 and 2010, Wal-Mart worked with and mobilized local community members and
organizations within New York City to gain approval to open its stores throughout the city
(Walker, 2014). More recently, sustainable cosmetic firm Beautycounter has mobilized its
consultants (i.e., independent home-based sellers) in advocating for stricter guidelines and
regulations to shift the personal-care industry away from harmful and questionable ingredients
towards its clean beauty products (Gelles, 2016). From 2011-2012, internet technology firms
(e.g., Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, etc.), for the first time, were
collectively able to use the internet to convince many of their individual stakeholders to contact
their elected representatives (in the US House of Representatives and the Senate) to oppose (and
ultimately kill) legislation intended to substantially reduce the freedom of the internet (Ngak,
2012). Drawing on this nascent tech-mediated approach to constituency building – through the
use of their apps, websites, instant messaging capabilities, etc. – disruptive sharing economy
platforms Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb have continued to mobilize their platform users to protect the

11
emergent gig-economy from potentially harmful regulations aggressively lobbied for by the taxi
and hotel industries (Said, 2015).
The existing body of work on constituency building has proven its sheer importance as a
viable and effective corporate political strategy by demonstrating that firms are able to mobilize
their stakeholders at the grassroots level to successfully influence public policy outcomes
(Hillman & Hitt, 1999). In particular, this literature has shown that through grassroots campaigns
firms are able to induce political mobilization by their employees (Heath et al., 1995; Hertel-
Fernandez, 2016, 2017, 2018), retirees (Keim, 1985), shareholders (Baysinger et al., 1985; Keim
et al., 1984), local community members (Kaynak & Barley, 2019; Walker, 2014), as well as
members of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and social movement organizations (or
SMOs) (Walker, 2014). In sum, this research has provided evidence that politically mobilizing
stakeholders to lobby their elected representatives, on a firm and/or industry’s behalf, is
perceived by legislators (i.e., US Congressional members) and their staffs as one of the most
effective ways for firms to impact their (i.e., politicians’) voting behavior when compared to
other corporate political strategies, such as: corporate political/financial contributions (i.e.,
corporate political donations and PAC contributions) and lobbying (Lord, 2000b). Although
constituency building is particularly efficacious in influencing Congress, research has also
evinced that it is effective when it comes to influencing policy decision making within the
executive branch of government and regulatory agencies (Lord, 2003).
Although we know that constituency building is an ever-prominent corporate political
strategy and is increasingly being adopted by firms across the industry spectrum (Keim, 1985;
Walker, 2014), the existent literature has yet to provide an in-depth accounting of the evolution
of this research stream within the field of strategy (as well as adjacent fields) or propose a

12
comprehensive research agenda moving forward.
Given the growing prevalence of constituency building within the global political
economy – coupled with our dearth of knowledge of it as both a strategic and political
phenomenon – continuing to theoretically and empirically disregard (intentionally or
unintentionally) the emergence and invigoration of this political strategy could have unintended
consequences not simply as it pertains to the international political economy, but also to the
preservation of democracy itself (Walker, 2009, 2014). As a legal strategic phenomenon, it is
important that we have a deeper understanding about why, when, and how firms make the
determination to institute constituency building campaigns, as well as how they implement this
political strategy and organize to that end. It is also essential that we understand the resources
and capabilities necessary and sufficient for employing this corporate political strategy in order
that we might predict, which firms will be more inclined to engage in transparent versus non-
transparent forms of constituency building. Furthermore, we have yet to explore and explicate in
the literature why constituents/stakeholders politically mobilize with, on behalf of, or for firms.
Is it simply, because of a shared stance on a policy issue? Is it because of shared values between
the firm and mobilizee? Does it have to do with the way that the issue has been framed for the
target stakeholder (whether that be accurate or inaccurate)? In short, not knowing the answers to
the questions posed above precludes strategy scholars and business leaders from fully capturing
why some firms engage in constituency building, as well as why some companies have a
competitive advantage in mobilizing their stakeholders at the grassroots level.
As a political phenomenon, it is essential that we fully ascertain both the political and
moral implications of an increasing number of firms utilizing constituency building and doing so
more frequently. Given the rise of authoritarianism around the globe and the increased attack on

13
civil liberties (and ultimately democracy), comprehending the nuances, intricacies, and
ramifications associated with firms actively mobilizing their stakeholders in pursuit of a
particular political end – which is amenable to the firm and its interests – is of the utmost import
insofar as firms are able to employ their resources to sway public opinion on substantive
sociopolitical issues in both acceptable and nefarious ways. Moreover, with the rise and
proliferation of ICTs, more and more firms are developing the capabilities to use their various
platforms (e.g., social media, apps, geolocation technology, etc.) to harvest our personal data in
order to develop psychological profiles, which can then be used not just to market products and
services to us (that are consistent with our psychological profiles), but to target political ads and
the like as a means to encourage us to adopt a position consistent with that of the firm on a
particular policy issue and mobilize thereafter (either virtually or through grassroots protests).
With the aforementioned challenges and opportunities regarding constituency building in
mind, within this chapter, I provide a general overview of the corporate political activities (CPA)
literature. I conduct an in-depth examination of constituency building as an ever-prevalent CPA
strategy, which is being increasingly adopted by firms of varying sizes and across various
industries. In short, this examination entails a review of the antecedents to using constituency
building, the various tactics associated with it, how to organize to implement this political
strategy, as well as the firm and societal-level outcomes associated with it. Additionally, I
explore how scholars have employed insights from sociology and political science, in particular,
to advance our understanding of constituency building, as well as how further arbitrage can be
used to continue this developmental trajectory. Drawing upon the aforementioned insights, I
propose an integrative theoretical model, which encompasses both from whence the literature has
come and in what direction it will need to go. Essentially, this conceptual framework will serve

14
as a theoretical map to help us orient our past, current, and future thinking as it relates to this
ever-growing phenomenon.
This chapter contributes to the CPA literature (in general) and the constituency building
literature (in particular) in several important ways. Firstly, it provides the first detailed literature
review of academic work on constituency building across the various disciplines in which this
research has been embedded. Secondly, it synergizes constituency building research, which is
being conducted within the fields of strategy, sociology, political science, marketing, and public
relations. In so doing, it proposes a common language that can be used across the relevant social
science disciplines (in which scholars are examining constituency building) in discussing and
investigating the elements of this political strategy. Lastly, this chapter sets the stage for
exploring the nascent tech-mediated form of constituency building (i.e., user lobbying).
In what follows, I provide a general overview of the CPA literature. I then review and
assess extant research on constituency building. Thereafter, I explore the opportunities that have
and can be had in furthering the constituency building literature through the integration of
theoretical and empirical tools from the fields of strategy, sociology, political science, marketing,
and public relations. I discuss user lobbying as an important area of research within the
constituency building literature. And finally, I end with a conclusion.

CORPORATE POLITICAL ACTIVITIES

An Overview

Scholars have defined corporate political activities (CPA) as strategic attempts by firms
to shape and influence government (i.e., public policy) in a manner favorable to the firm
(Baysinger, 1984; Hillman et al., 2004). In pursuing their political interests, firms protect

15
themselves from predatory and/or overly cumbersome regulation and legislation, induce
regulation and legislation that protects the firm and/or insulates it from competition, and lobby
for preferential treatment with respect to government contracts and economic rents. Engaging in
CPA allows firms not only to insulate themselves from harm, but it also helps ensure both their
survival and perpetuation.

A Typology of Corporate Political Strategies and Tactics

The existent literature on CPA has demonstrated that firms within both developed and
emerging market contexts seek to influence public policy outcomes to their benefit (Hillman et
al., 2004). Using the metaphor of a marketplace, Hillman and Keim (1995) opine that just as
customers demand goods and services and suppliers supply those goods and services in the
marketplace, within the political marketplace firms demand public policies conducive to their
needs and government entities use their resources (i.e., supply) to meet those needs. In short, like
the marketplace, the political marketplace is comprised of public policy demanders (i.e., firms)
and suppliers (i.e., governments) who are all vying for their particular political interests (Bonardi
et al., 2005; Buchanan, 1968, 1975, 1986, 1987, 1988; Hillman & Keim, 1995).
With respect to the political marketplace, researchers have shown that firms utilize CPS
formulation and implementation to influence government decision-making (Hillman & Hitt,
1999). In their seminal work, Hillman and Hitt (1999) elucidate this CPS formulation process.
First, they assert that firms make the determination as to whether they will approach the public
policy influence process transactionally (i.e., where firms seek to influence public policy in an ad
hoc manner and on a case-by-case basis when salient policy issues arise) or relationally (i.e.,
where firms seek to build rapport and relations with key policy makers and policy making

16
institutions over a substantive amount of time in order to influence public policy over the long-
term).
The second major strategic decision that firms have to make when engaging in CPA is
which type of political strategy – or combination of political strategies – they will employ.
Drawing on previous work, Hillman and Hitt (1999) assert that there are three types of political
strategies that firms have at their disposal. The first political strategy that firms can use is an
information strategy, wherein companies target political decision makers through the provision
of information. Essentially, in order to develop prudent laws, policies, and regulations, policy
makers need insights from firms (who possess expertise on their industry in general and of their
products and/or services in particular) on how best to achieve this end. Thus, through the
provision of information to government, firms are able to exercise their political influence.
The second political strategy that firms can employ is a financial incentive strategy. With
a financial incentive strategy, a firm targets political decision makers through the provision of
monetary incentives and financial inducements. In essence, given the reality that politicians are
oftentimes in need of money to fund their campaigns, to offset travel expenses, or to implement
certain policies or programs, firms can use their residual monetary resources as a means to
influence policy makers.
The last political strategy that firms can use is a constituency building strategy. With a
constituency building strategy, unlike information and financial incentive strategies, firms
indirectly target political decision makers through engendering constituent (or stakeholder)
support for their policy preferences. This political strategy allows firms to politically leverage
their stakeholders realizing the fact that politicians are dependent upon their constituents (i.e.,
firm stakeholders) for re-election and other forms of legitimation; hence, by leveraging

17
stakeholders (i.e., politicians’ constituents) firms are able to exercise their political influence
indirectly.
The final major strategic decision that firms have to make when engaging in CPA is
which type of political tactic to use. In their model, Hillman and Hitt (1999) demonstrate that
when using an information strategy firms can use one or more of the following political tactics:
(1) lobbying, (2) commissioning research projects and reporting research results, (3) testifying as
expert witnesses, and (4) supplying position papers or technical reports. When instituting a
financial incentive strategy firms can (1) give monetary contributions to politicians and/or their
party, (2) provide policy makers with honoraria for speaking, (3) cover politicians’ travel related
expenses (when making on-site visits to the company), and (4) conduct personal service efforts
(wherein they hire people with relevant political experience/connections or have a
prominent/committed firm member run for political office) (Hillman & Hitt, 1999). Finally, as
Hillman and Hitt (1999) explain, when marshalling a constituency building campaign, firms can
engage in (1) the grassroots mobilization of their employees, suppliers, customers, etc., as well
as utilize (2) advocacy advertising, (3) public relations, (4) press conferences, and (5) political
education programs.

Corporate Political Activity Literature Reviews

Having defined CPA, elucidated its various components as a strategic process, and
discussed its significance, it is important that we briefly explore the various literature reviews
and research agenda setting papers that have been written on CPA to date. For reviewing these
works will give us a broad indication of the ground that scholars have covered in this domain,
and more importantly, the extent to which research on constituency building (as a political

18
strategy) has been both featured (i.e., viewed as an important form of political strategizing) and
thoroughly examined in these works. Moreover, a historical survey of research agenda setting
scholarship within CPA will provide constituency building scholars with a roadmap for
developing this particular research stream (within the greater CPA literature).
Within the CPA literature, there are five seminal papers, which provide an accounting of
the state of the literature (up until that given point), as well as a clear research trajectory
thenceforth. These canonical works are as follows: Shaffer (1995), Getz (1997), Hillman et al.
(2004), Lawton et al. (2013), and Dorobantu et al. (2017). Although different in their approach to
examining the literature and charting a way forward for CPA research, each one of these
academic pieces contributes to the further development of this literature.
The first of these papers is that of Shaffer (1995). In his review, Shaffer (1995) discusses
the divergent approach to studying CPA from the disciplinary perspectives of economics,
political science, and organizational theory (i.e., sociology). This work reviews the variables that
have been discussed in the CPA literature (e.g., environment, social structure, industry structure,
and competition). And it discusses research methods used in empirical studies on CPA.
Getz’s (1997) review integrates 9 social science theories (i.e., interest group theory,
collective action theory, public choice theory, transaction cost theory, resource dependency
theory, exchange theory, behavioral theory of the firm, institutional theory, and agency theory) in
examining CPA. Drawing on insights from these theories, Getz (1997) discusses how the CPA
literature explains the characteristics of firms who engage in CPA, why these firms engage in
CPA, and how these firms engage in CPA (i.e., the tactics that they use).
In their review and research agenda, Hillman et al. (2004), evaluate CPA scholarship
published after Shaffer (1995) from the fields of management, political science, economics and

19
sociology. Most importantly, Hillman et al. (2004) propose a conceptual model, which discusses
the antecedents of CPA, the different types of CPA, how firms organize to implement CPA, and
the outcomes of CPA (for firms and the public at large). Of all of the review pieces, this work is
arguably the most impactful.
Lawton et al. (2013), provide a review of research on CPA with an emphasis on three
domains. Those domains are resources and capabilities, institutions, and political environment.
Unlike previous literature reviews, the authors consider the effect of the internationalization of
business and economic globalization on CPA research generally and CPA research within
emerging/developing economies particularly.
The most recent review and research agenda setting piece is that of Dorobantu et al.
(2017). In a novel fashion, these authors propose a theoretical model, which synthesizes research
from both CPA and corporate social responsibility into one cohesive nonmarket strategy
framework. Dorobantu et al. (2017) draw solely upon new institutional economics in arguing that
“firms can create and appropriate value by either adapting to, augmenting, or transforming the
existing institutional environment, and can do so either independently or in collaboration with
others” (p. 114). In so doing, they introduce 6 distinct strategies that firms can use to advance
their nonmarket interests, discuss the tradeoffs between these strategies, and the social impact of
these strategies.
As the aforementioned literature reviews on CPA demonstrate, relative to information
and financial forms of corporate political strategy, constituency building has received
substantially less attention from strategy scholars. Keeping this shortcoming within the literature
in mind, below, I provide a detailed accounting of what we currently know about constituency
building and what we need to ascertain moving forward.

20
CONSTITUENCY BUILDING: A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

When reflecting upon the five seminal CPA review and research agenda setting papers
discussed in the previous section (e.g., Shaffer, 1995; Getz, 1997; Hillman et al. 2004, Lawton et
al., 2013; Dorobantu, 2017), it is clear that throughout the literature primacy has been given to
examining the tactics associated with the financial and information strategies (i.e., political
contributions and lobbying) of corporate political influence, whilst far less attention has been
given to ascertaining the intricacies of constituency building. One wonders, however, why this is
the case. That is, why have CPA scholars not dedicated more attention to studying and
elucidating constituency building, especially given its ever-growing importance over the last
several decades and its effectiveness in influencing the voting decisions of legislators on public
policy issues (Hillman & Hitt, 1999; Keim, 1985; Lord, 2000b). Perhaps this is due to strategy
scholars having found financial and information strategies easier to study on account of
quantitative data being more readily accessible via governmental (i.e., at the federal, state, and
municipal levels) and non-governmental entities. For, because of the prevalence of these data,
hypotheses related to the aforementioned political strategies, are relatively easy to test.
Relatedly, perhaps the lack of willingness and/or ability to conduct qualitative research coupled
with the lack of imagination and innovation in developing and proliferating data sets that can be
utilized to test correlational, causal, and configurational questions concerning constituency
building, have precluded strategy researchers from further developing this important literature
(and ultimately our academic understanding of this phenomenon). In short, with the exception of
Michael Lord (Lord, 2000a; Lord, 2000b), Edward Walker (Walker, 2009; Walker, 2014),
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez (2018), Bilgehan Uzunca, J.P. Coen Rigtering, and Pinar Ozcan
(2018), and Clark Johnson, Brittney Bauer, and Brad Carlson (2021), scholars have either found

21
it much more empirically challenging to explore the constituency building strategy or they have
wrongfully deemed it of less importance (Hillman & Hitt, 1999; Keim, 1985; Lord, 2000a; Lord,
2000b; Lord, 2003).
Drawing inspiration from the lack of attention and concern afforded to the proliferation
of constituency building research – exemplified in the seminal CPA review and research agenda
setting papers discussed in the previous section (e.g., Shaffer, 1995; Getz, 1997; Hillman et al.
2004; Lawton et al., 2013; Dorobantu, 2017) – in this section, I define constituency building as a
corporate political strategy. And based on my review of the existent literature (See Table 1), I
introduce my theoretical framework (See Figure 1), which elucidates four aspects of
constituency building as a political strategy: (1) antecedents, (2) approaches, (3) participation
levels, and (4) tactics.
These 4 aspects of constituency building (e.g., (1) antecedents, (2) approaches, (3)
participation levels, and (4) tactics), illustrated in Table 1 and Figure 1, also provide a general
guide to the following discussion, as well as an explanation of the factors that firms have to
consider during the constituency building decision-making process.

22
Table 1: Reviewed Studies by Topic
Topic Studies

Antecedents to Constituency Building
(Culpepper & Thelan, 2019; Heath et al., 1995; Hertel-Fernandez,
2016, 2018; Hillman et al., 2004; Hillman & Hitt, 1999; Lord, 2003;
Murray et al., 2016; Walker, 2012, 2014)

Approaches to
Constituency
Building

Overt/Transparent
(Baysinger, 1984; Baysinger et al., 1985; Culpepper & Thelan, 2019;
Gurses & Ozcan, 2015; Hillman & Hitt, 1999; Jia & Mayer, 2016;
Keim, 1981; Keim, 1985; Keim et al., 1984; Lord, 2000a, 2000b,
2003; Orozco, 2016; Schlichting, 2014; Sethi, 1981)
Covert/Non-
transparent/Astroturf
(Lyon & Maxwell, 2004; McNutt & Boland, 2007; Walker, 2009,
2012, 2013, 2014; Hertel-Fernandez, 2016, 2017, 2018)
Participation
Level
Collective (Hillman & Hitt, 1999; Olson, 1965, Ozcan & Gurses, 2018; Yoffie,
1987)
Individual (Culpepper & Thelan, 2019; Hillman & Hitt, 1999; Olson, 1965;
Yoffie, 1987))

Constituency
Building
Tactics

Corporate Grassroots
Mobilization
Definitions of Tactics (Baron, 2018; Baysinger, 1984;
Culpepper & Thelan, 2019;
Gurses & Ozcan, 2015; Heath et
al., 1995; Hertel-Fernandez,
2016, 2017, 2018; Jia & Mayer,
2016; Johnson et al., 2021;
Kaynak & Barley, 2019; Keim,
1996; Keim et al., 1984; Lord,
2000a, 2000b, 2003; Lyon &
Maxwell, 2004; McNutt &
Boland, 2007; Orozco, 2016;
Ozcan & Gurses, 2018;
Schlichting, 2014; Uzunca et al.,
2018; Walker, 2009, 2014).
Grassroots mobilization is where
firms attempt to convince
individual stakeholders to
express their policy preferences
directly to policy makers on the
firm’s behalf.

Advocacy
Advertising
Advocacy advertising is a form
of public political
communication used by firms
that attempts to influence public
opinion on specific political
and/or economic issues germane
to firms’ performance.
(Haley, 1996; Haley &
Wilkinson, 1994; Hillman &
Hitt, 1999; Keim & Zeithaml,
1986; Miller & Sinclair, 2009;
Reid et al., 1981; Sethi, 1978,
1981; Schlichting, 2014; Sinclair
& Irani, 2005)

Public Relations
Public relations is the manner in
which firms communicate their
vision of themselves to the
public.
(Botan & Taylor, 2004; Cutlip,
1994; Hillman & Hitt, 1999;
Ledingham & Bruning, 1998;
Kaynak & Barley, 2019; Wynne,
2014)

Political Education
Programs
Political education programs are
initiated by firms to educate their
stakeholders on the importance
of being politically active, how to
be politically active, the issues
affecting the firm, how to register
to vote, how to vote, etc.

(Hertel-Fernandez, 2018;
Hillman & Hitt, 1999; Keim,
1985; Keim et al., 1984)

23
Figure 1: Corporate Constituency Building Review Framework

In the subsequent section, I also discuss two approaches to implementing a constituency
building effort and explore the recent role that scholars of sociology and political science have
played in invigorating this literature. Third, I enumerate the various tactics associated with
constituency building. Lastly, I review what we currently know about mobilizing various
stakeholders.

Defining Constituency Building

As Keim, Baysinger, Zeithaml, and their colleagues have explained in their early work
(i.e., Baysinger 1984; Baysinger et al., 1985; Keim, 1985; Keim et al., 1984; Keim & Zeithaml,
1986) corporate constituency building is a political strategy where firms attempt to identify,
educate, and motivate individual people to mobilize politically on issues that mutually affect
them and the firm responsible for initiating mobilization. These individuals are found within the
ranks of a given firm’s stakeholder constituency. That is, within the company itself (i.e.,
Environmental Factors
• Industry Regulation
• Visibility
Firm Level Factors
• Broad-Based Grassroots
Political Support
• Large Employee Base
• Large Customer Base
• Policy Framing Ability
• Direct Lobbying Capabilities
• Significant PAC
Contributions to Republican
Candidates
• Large In-house Political
Operations
• Public Controversies
• Social Protests
Overt
• Transparent
• Visibility
Individual
• Nature of the Policy Issue
• Firm Resources?
• Firm Capabilities?
CB Tactic
• Grassroots Mobilization
• Advocacy Advertising
• Public Relations
• Political Education
Programs
Constituency Building
Antecedents
Constituency Building
Approaches
Constituency Building
Participation Levels
Stakeholder Mobilization
Covert
• Non-Transparent
• Astroturfing
• Coercion
• Usage of Grassroots
Lobbying Firms
Collective
• Nature of the Policy Issue
• Firm Resources?
• Firm Capabilities?
Stakeholder Type
• Customer / User
• Employee / Retiree
• Shareholder
• Community Member
Stakeholder Action
• Op-Ed
• Personalized Letter / Email
/ Phone Call to Policy
Maker
• Social Media Post
• Petition / Protest
• Vote
Policy / Regulatory Outcome
• Policy / Regulatory Change
• Policy / Regulatory
Stagnation

24
employees, executives, and board members), as well as outside the company (e.g., retirees,
shareholders, customers, suppliers, retailers, local community members, citizens, etc.). Drawing
on this broad-based network, firms encourage their stakeholders to individually contact their
elected political representatives to voice their policy preferences. Constituents articulate these
policy preferences by writing, petitioning, calling, and more recently emailing and messaging
(via text or social media) their representatives and/or regulatory policymakers. In some instances,
constituents will even engage in public protest in front of the targeted representative’s building
and/or office when it becomes apparent that the politician is considering the adoption of a policy
position incongruent with their own. These acts communicate to policy makers two important
things. First, that there is broad-based support for the given policy position that constituents are
advocating (Keim, 1985; Keim et al., 1984; Keim & Zeithaml, 1986; Lord, 2000a), and
secondly, that not voting for and/or supporting legislation or regulation in a manner consistent
with this position could have political repercussions with respect to their re-election (Lord, 2003)
or reputation. This threat can be particularly unsettling for politicians with shorter (e.g., two
year) terms, those seeking re-election, those looking to complete their political tenure (i.e., public
service) drama free (Lord, 2000b), as well as for regulators and regulatory institutions in need of
legitimacy.
1
In sum, by leveraging the persuasive power of firm stakeholders (i.e., politicians’
and regulators’ constituents) companies are able to indirectly pressure policy makers to act in a
manner consistent with firm prerogatives.

1
All of this being said, it is important to note, that successfully implementing a corporate grassroots mobilization
strategy does not necessarily lead to successful policy change for these two outcomes are at times mutually
exclusive.

25
(1) Structural Antecedents of Constituency Building

In this section, I highlight the antecedents to instituting a constituency building campaign
as is articulated in the extant literature. Although there has been a reasonable amount of research
illustrating the antecedents of corporate political engagement broadly defined (i.e., financial,
informational, and constituency building strategies), hitherto, there has been substantively less
work that has elucidated the specific antecedents related to constituency building. Hence, in
bringing these constituency building antecedents to light, I bifurcate them into two domains.
That is, environmental factors and firmographic characteristics (or firm-level factors).
As for environmental factors (pertaining to constituency building antecedents), of the few
studies that have been conducted, researchers have focused solely on large incumbent firms.
These studies have shown that when it comes to these organizations, industry regulation (Hertel-
Fernandez, 2018; Walker, 2012, 2014) and the visibility of a firm’s industry (Walker, 2012)
increases the likelihood that these companies will engage in constituency building as a political
strategy. The implication in these studies being that large incumbent firms that are embedded
within industries with substantial regulation, as well as industries that are better known to the
general public (i.e., firm/industry stakeholders), would have a greater amount of policy issues
that they would need their stakeholders to politically support them on, and these issues would
have broader public appeal (i.e., be more salient to a large and diverse group of firm/industry
stakeholders).
With respect to firm-level factors – as it relates to constituency building antecedents
amongst large incumbent firms – scholars in general have shown that companies with greater
grassroots support, political capabilities, and targeting by social movement actors are more likely
to employ constituency building as their political strategy of choice. More specifically, the

26
existent literature has demonstrated that large firms with sincere, credible, deep, and broad-based
grassroots political support (Lord, 2003), a large employee (Heath et al., 1995; Hertel-Fernandez,
2016, 2018; Hillman & Hitt, 1999) and customer base (Lord, 2003), the ability to publicly frame
a policy position (Murray et al., 2016), direct lobbying capabilities, significant PAC
contributions to Republican candidates, large in-house political operations, access to grassroots
lobbying firms, and public controversies and social protests (Walker, 2012) are more inclined to
initiate constituency building campaigns.
Summary. Although the aforementioned studies are helpful in comprehending some of
the environmental and firm-level antecedents of constituency building, given the fact they were
conducted solely on large firms, it is not clear (1) if these findings hold for smaller
entrepreneurial enterprises, (2) whether these factors are necessary and/or sufficient to bring
about a firm’s engagement in constituency building, nor is it clear (3) if these antecedents vary
based on whether a firm engages in overt/transparent versus covert/non-transparent forms of
constituency building.

(2) Two Approaches to Constituency Building

Research on constituency building has demonstrated that the political mobilization of
stakeholders transpires in both an overt/transparent (Baysinger, 1984; Baysinger et al., 1985;
Hillman & Hitt, 1999; Jia & Mayer, 2016; Keim, 1981; Keim, 1985; Keim et al., 1984; Lord,
2000a, 2000b, 2003; Sethi, 1981) and covert/non-transparent fashion (Lyon & Maxwell, 2004;
Walker, 2009, 2012, 2013, 2014; Hertel-Fernandez, 2016, 2017, 2018). Early scholarship on
constituency building, within the field of strategy, first began to emerge in the 1980s and
predominantly viewed constituency building as an overt and transparent political strategy. The

27
majority of recent scholarly work, however, has tended to view constituency building in a more
nefarious light, as a covert, oftentimes coercive, and non-transparent form of political
strategizing, which can have negative implications on democracy (Hertel-Fernandez, 2017;
Walker 2009, 2014).
Transparent Constituency Building. With respect to the former, the early work on
constituency building focused predominantly on the transparent strain of this political strategy.
For instance, Keim et al. (1984) explicitly state – in one of the earliest strategy works on
constituency building – that for constituency building campaigns to be successful they must be
transparent. And in being transparent, firms are able to utilize their greatest ‘natural’ resource –
their people to advance their shared political interests (Keim et al., 1984). Further demonstrating
their point of view, Keim et al. (1984) even go so far as to refer to their organizational
stakeholders as ‘natural constituents’ of the firm. In like manner, Lord (2003, p. 118) asserts that
firms with “sincere, credible, deep, and broad-based grassroots political support” are most often
the ones that are capable of successfully executing a corporate constituency building effort. Sethi
(1981) affirms that beginning in the 1970s companies were increasingly employing indirect
lobbying (i.e., constituency building) tactics – in response to legislator’s growing interest in and
sensitivity to their constituents’ policy preferences – which up until that point had predominantly
been used by labor unions. Taking a page out of the book of labor unions and civil society
organizations, firms had started to target their stakeholders and legislators district by district,
focusing their constituency building campaigns on the districts wherein they had a significant
stakeholder constituency and organizational presence (Sethi, 1981). For it is within these districts
where firms have the most organic support and shared interests with stakeholders, which can be
leveraged to induce grassroots mobilization (Keim et al., 1984).

28
Be it the reality that political mobilization requires personal commitment from individual
stakeholders, early scholarship argued that it is highly unlikely that blatant propaganda and half-
truths would suffice in engendering stakeholder political mobilization (Keim et al., 1984).
Rather, for firms to successfully mobilize their stakeholders, they need to (1) identify their
shared interests, (2) communicate those shared interests to stakeholders, (3) educate stakeholders
on the given policy issue and the impact it will have on them, and (4) motivate individual
citizens (i.e., stakeholders) to take political action (Baysinger, 1984; Keim et al., 1984; Lord,
2003). However, prior to the mobilization process, firms first need to determine whether
constituency building is actually the appropriate political strategy insofar as it is usually effective
for clear and simple political influence tasks, such as: trying to influence legislative voting on a
particular bill; in contrast, constituency building efforts may not be as appropriate for other more
complex tasks, such as providing highly technical and detailed policy preferences to political
decision makers, wherein lobbying may be more effective (Lord, 2003). Because mobilizing
stakeholders to provide highly technical and detailed policy preferences could be perceived by
policy makers as insincere or contrived (as opposed to genuine constituent feedback), early
constituency building scholars emphasized the importance of appropriately using this political
strategy inasmuch as they had a negative perception concerning the ill effects of a constituency
building effort being perceived as inauthentic or fake by political decision makers (e.g., Keim,
1985; Keim et al., 1984; Lord, 2000a, 2000b, 2003).
In short, for most of the early scholars of constituency building, fake corporate grassroots
mobilization efforts (i.e., astroturf campaigns) were either not a consideration, perceived as only
a remote possibility (Keim et al., 1984), or viewed as an impediment to successful grassroots-
stakeholder mobilization and policy influence (e.g., Keim, 1985; Lord, 2000a, 2000b, 2003).

29
Astroturf Campaigns. More recent scholarship, however, has adopted a different
perspective as it relates to the transparency of constituency building campaigns. Instead of
focusing on the ‘natural’ political mobilization of stakeholders by firms, some researchers have
begun to unearth the more covert and coercive side of constituency building. Much of this work,
which emanates from economics, sociology, and political science, has demonstrated that firms
politically mobilize individuals at the grassroots level through astroturfing or fake grassroots
efforts (Lyon & Maxwell, 2004; McNutt & Boland, 2007). Long-time Texas Senator Lloyd
Bensten is credited for coining the term astroturfing in reference to the artificial campaigns
created by grassroots lobbying firms that are designed to give the false perception of transparent
grassroots mobilization (Lyon & Maxwell, 2004). Instead, these firms, who initiate
nontransparent constituency building efforts, utilize third parties or brokers (Walker, 2009, 2012,
2013, 2014), deception (Lyon & Maxwell, 2004), and/or coercion (Hertel-Fernandez, 2016,
2017, 2018) to achieve their desired ends.
Economists have made modest contributions to the furtherance of constituency building
research in its more non-transparent form. For instance, Lyon and Maxwell (2004) examine how
firms engage with grassroots organizations and interest groups in politically mobilizing their
individual stakeholders when firms’ lobbying efforts are not perceived as credible by public
policy makers. They argue that in this event firms are incentivized to engage in astroturfing
through covertly subsidizing a grassroots political campaign as a means to undermine the ability
of political decision makers to access reliable information on the policy preferences of their
constituents. Hence, as Lyon and Maxwell (2004) opine, policy makers have an incentive to
investigate the relationship between grassroots organizations and firms to ascertain the extent to
which astroturfing was utilized. These scholars argue that politicians are also incentivized to

30
identify the conditions under which astroturfing takes place in equilibrium. To attenuate these
public concerns, Lyon and Maxwell (2004) propose that policy makers consider legislation that
would force firms to publicly disclose their astroturfing expenditures. In their view, such
governmental action would significantly reduce the prevalence of astroturfing and/or render this
political tactic ineffective.
Although work of economists like Lyon and Maxwell (2004) has been helpful in
developing the literature, research from the field of sociology (e.g., Walker, 2009, 2012, 2014)
has been the most helpful in invigorating the corporate constituency building literature as it
relates to astroturf campaigns. This work has drawn upon expertise in the social movements and
organizational theory literatures to deepen our comprehension of the ways in which companies
mobilize at the grassroots level through intermediaries.
In his initial exploration into corporate grassroots mobilization, Walker (2009) explores
the rise of grassroots lobbying firms (GLFs). GLFs are professional public advocacy firms that
orchestrate grassroots lobbying campaigns by subsidizing citizen participation in the political
process. These companies provide services to businesses, trade associations, public interest
groups, and government entities. GLFs support and assist their client organizations by provoking
grassroots citizen activism to further their political interests. Walker shows that these entities,
which trace their origins in the U.S. back to the 1970s, have grown in terms of their number,
prominence, and public policy influence. And that they help their clients (i.e., corporations,
industry groups, and business associations) influence public policy by mobilizing their
organizational stakeholders to contact their elected representatives through direct mail, email,
and telephone. His findings suggest that the emergence of GLFs, which as he argues subsidizes
democratic participation, results from the increase in formal organization amongst civil society.

31
Walker asserts that the rise of these organizations has retarded the development of social capital
and civic skills within society, whilst giving voice to business interests in the legislative sphere.
Walker (2012) advances the corporate political activity literature in general – and the
corporate grassroots mobilization literature in particular – by integrating it with that of
stakeholder management. And in so doing, he ameliorates our understanding of how the
structural characteristics of a firm affect its ability to mobilize its stakeholders in professional
grassroots lobbying campaigns. In this study, Walker furthers his previous work (e.g., Walker,
2009), by first focusing specifically on the corporate political strategy efforts of firms, and
secondly through examining if and how companies combine the political influence tactics of
grassroots mobilization (through hiring grassroots mobilization firms), the lobbying of Congress
and the White House Administration, and PAC contributions. In investigating this question,
Walker (2012) creates a unique data source drawing on information from two sources: (1) the
clients of grassroots lobbying firms, and (2) data on inside lobbying by corporations who
appeared in the Lobbyist Disclosure Reports of 1996.
2
From these data, Walker finds that
“… corporate grassroots lobbying is shaped most significantly by a firm’s degree of
inside lobbying, as highly active firms take a diversified strategy for gaining influence.
Firms in industries with a heavy public presence as well as those concerned with taxation,
government appropriations, and economic development also adopt these strategies
readily. PAC contributions to Republican, but not Democratic, candidates also heighten
firms’ propensity to lobby the public” (Walker, 2012, p. 561).

Building upon the contributions of Lyons and Maxwell (in elucidating astroturfing) and
Walker (in exploring the role of corporate brokers in corporate sponsored grassroots mobilization
efforts), political scientist Hertel-Fernandez (2016, 2017, 2018), has begun to explore how and to
what extent firms are coercing their employees to take political action that coheres with the

2
The Lobbyist Disclosure Act (LDA), passed in 1994 – during the Republican takeover of Congress – mandated the
filing of semiannual reports for firms and other groups involved in lobbying on Capitol Hill.

32
political position of the organization. He refers to this phenomenon as employee mobilization,
which he defines as “…any effort by senior corporate managers to alter the political behavior or
attitudes of their workers as company policy” (Hertel-Fernandez, 2016, p. 411).
Hertel-Fernandez (2017) shows that while employer political recruitment has some
benefits for American democracy – for instance, in getting more workers to the polls – it also has
troubling implications for the US democratic system. Workers face considerable pressure to
respond to their managers' political requests because of the economic power employers possess
over them. This has particularly been the situation with some firms in the aftermath of the
Supreme Court ruling on the Citizens United case, wherein they have pressured employees to
mobilize politically on their behalf and have decided to fire or discipline employees who refuse
to participate (Hertel-Fernandez, 2016). In spite of these worrisome patterns, Hertel-Fernandez
has found that corporate managers view the mobilization of their own workers as an important
strategy for influencing politics.
In his most recent work, Hertel-Fernandez (2018) interviews 34 corporate government
affairs officers and 9 business associations, and surveys approximately 500 corporate managers,
1,500 employees, and 101 senior Congressional staffers to comprehend employee mobilization.
Generally speaking, Hertel-Fernandez (2018) finds that (1) employee mobilization is an
increasingly common way that US companies attempt to reshape US policy and elections, (2) it
can be quite effective, and (3) it is normatively problematic, and as such, requires a policy
response. From the perspective of corporate managers (as it relates to public policy influence),
employee mobilization is as effective as hiring lobbyists and is more effective than PAC
contributions, buying political ads, and participating in (i.e., lobbying through) the US Chamber

33
of Commerce (Hertel-Fernandez, 2018). Hertel-Fernandez (2018) also finds that employee
mobilization can be complementary to other corporate political strategies, such as lobbying.
In brief, the work of Lyon and Maxwell, Walker, and Hertel-Fernandez – unlike their
predecessors – sheds light on the reality that numerous firms are engaging in more covert, less
transparent, and more coercive forms of constituency building. This research shows that the
more ‘nefarious’ approach to constituency building is increasingly being adopted by companies.
Moreover, their work exemplifies the preoccupation within the current constituency building
literature with astroturfing.
Summary. The research reviewed above illustrates that there are two general approaches
to instituting a constituency building campaign. That is, a more overt/transparent approach and a
more covert/non-transparent approach (the latter of which is oftentimes referred to as
astroturfing). This research also demonstrates some of the antecedents associated with adopting
an overt/transparent and covert/non-transparent approach to constituency building, when it
comes to large incumbent firms. While more scholarly work is needed to further unpack these
antecedents – and other antecedents yet to be explored, as well as antecedents for startup firms –
it remains unclear when firms will adopt an overt/transparent versus covert/non-transparent
constituency building approach. The literature has also yet to determine why some firms may opt
to use an overt/transparent approach in one instance and a covert/non-transparent approach in
another. In what follows, I briefly discuss the important yet underdeveloped work on individual
versus collective constituency building efforts.

34
(3) Individual or Collective Constituency Building Campaigns

In addition to determining which constituency building approach to adopt, firms also
have to decide whether they should employ this political strategy individually or collectively.
Over the decades, corporate political strategy scholars have highlighted the importance of firms
making this decision as it relates to their level of political engagement (Drope & Hansen, 2009;
Hansen et al., 2005; Hillman & Hitt, 1999; Jia, 2014; Mizruchi & Koenig, 1991; Olson, 1965;
Walker & Rea, 2014; Yoffie, 1987); nevertheless, when it comes to research on individual and
collective corporate led constituency building campaigns, the extant literature has been relatively
quiet.
The lack of academic attention afforded to the question of whether firms will engage in
constituency building individually or collectively is worrisome insofar as the popular media has
brought to our attention numerous real-world case examples which demonstrate the prevalence
and importance of this decision amongst companies. For instance, internet firms had to decide
whether they would respond to internet service provider sponsored bills in the US Congress –
which sought to limit the internet freedoms of firms and citizens – by mobilizing their firm-
specific stakeholders, firm-specific stakeholders in concert with their industry’s stakeholders
(i.e., through their trade association; the Internet Association), or firm-specific, industry, and
societal stakeholders in concert with both their trade association and social movement
organizations (leading the net neutrality movement) (Ngak, 2012). Ultimately, the member firms
of the Internet Association decided to engage collectively, while also partnering with pro net
neutrality social movement organizations and activists.
The net neutrality fight is not the only issue wherein we have witnessed firms making the
determination to collectively (as opposed to individually) organize constituency building

35
campaigns, however. Sharing economy firms DoorDash, Instacart, Lyft, Uber, and Postmates,
for example, collectively organized and sponsored Proposition 22 in California (O’Brien, 2020).
Proposition 22 – also known as the App-Based Drivers as Contractors and Labor Policies
Initiative – was placed on the ballot on November 3, 2020 by the aforementioned sharing
economy firms. The purpose of this ballot initiative was to define app-based transportation (i.e.,
ridesharing) and delivery drivers as independent contractors (as opposed to firm employees), and
as such, to adopt labor and wage policies specific to app-based drivers and firms. Ultimately, the
sharing economy coalition sponsoring Proposition 22 was able to convince enough grassroots
stakeholders of participating companies to vote in favor of this initiative that it passed and was
approved by the Californian State Legislature. In addition to the net neutrality and ridesharing
case examples, we have also seen similar decisions, whereby firms opt for collective (instead of
individual) constituency building in order to protect the homesharing (i.e., HomeAway and
VRBO in a Southern city) and online fantasy sports industries (i.e., FanDuel and DraftKings in
New York State) (Phone2Action, 2020).
To begin the process of addressing the lacuna between media and academic coverage on
this important corporate political decision, Murphy et al. (2022) theoretically explore the notion
of individual versus collective corporate/industry led constituency building campaigns. As they
assert, when it comes to the costs of constituency building in mobilizing stakeholders, for
industries (on average), the costs are greater than that of individual firms. That is, in addition to
the costs of search, mobilization, and monitoring, industry associations incur the collective
action costs related to getting firm-level sponsors on the same page; however, on the other hand,
industry led constituency building campaigns can also yield greater benefits insofar as
policymakers are more incentivized to support policies and/or regulations that have broad

36
stakeholder/societal support – from both economically- and morally-driven stakeholders. In sum,
Murphy et al. (2022) argue that after overcoming the challenges related to collective action,
industry organized constituency building campaigns may be the most effective type of grassroots
coalition – in influencing public/regulatory policy outcomes – in that they involve a greater
amount of firms and their economically- and morally-interested stakeholders.
Summary. Albeit nascent scholarship has begun to theorize the cost-benefit calculations
associated with instituting individual versus corporate led constituency building campaigns, there
is a concerning paucity of research within this space. This dearth of academic examination belies
the importance and prevalence of this political decision amongst firms. Thus, it is important that
future work build on Murphy et al. (2022) to advance our theoretical and empirical
understanding of the strategic considerations related to individual versus collective corporate
organized constituency building. In the following section, I review the scholarship on
constituency building tactics, which has received a substantive amount of academic attention
relative to that of participation level.

(4) Constituency Building Tactics

In their typology of CPA strategies and tactics, Hillman and Hitt (1999) explain that
when implementing the political strategy of constituency building, firms can engage their
stakeholders politically through (1) grassroots mobilization (2) advocacy advertising, (3) public
relations, and/or (4) political education programs. These tactics are important elements to any
successful constituency building campaign insofar as they allow a firm to operationalize
constituency building as a political strategy. In this section, I will define each constituency
building tactic, review the literature on each tactic, and reveal how within the literature on

37
constituency building most scholarly work has been dedicated to corporate grassroots
mobilization campaigns, whilst far less attention has been given to the other constituency
building tactics.
Corporate Grassroots Mobilization. Since the inception of the constituency building
literature, CPS scholars have predominantly focused their attention on examining the tactic of
grassroots mobilization (to the exclusion of most of the other tactics associated with this political
strategy). Essentially, grassroots mobilization is where a firm engenders political mobilization by
their individual stakeholders, which is typically manifested in stakeholders expressing their
policy preferences directly to policy makers (Lord, 2000a, 2000b, 2003; Walker, 2009, 2014).
Within this literature, CPS scholars have explored the process of grassroots mobilization, as well
as issues related to politically mobilizing particular stakeholders like firm shareholders,
employees, customers, and community members. This work has generally shown that firms’
individual stakeholders are an important resource for influencing public policy decision makers
(Lord, 2000a, 2000b, 2003).
The Grassroots Mobilization Process. When it comes to successfully mobilizing
stakeholders at the grassroots level, we learn from the existent literature that this process requires
certain steps. In this part of the dissertation, I illustrate these steps and introduce the Corporate
Grassroots Mobilization Process Model (See Figure 2). This conceptual framework summarizes
what we know from both the academic and practitioner literatures regarding the corporate
grassroots mobilization process.

38
Figure 2: Corporate Constituency Building Process Model

In brief, once firms determine their approach, participation level, and tactic (i.e.,
corporate grassroots mobilization), they need to (1) select a political target, (2) identify
mobilizable stakeholders, (2) communicate shared interests to stakeholders, (3) educate
stakeholders on the policy issue and how they can take political action, and (4) motivate
stakeholders to actually engage in some form of political action (Baysinger, 1984; Keim et al.,
1984; Lord, 2003; Walker & Rea, 2014).
When it comes to selecting a particular political target, the literature on policymaking has
established that firms often tailor their political strategizing around the anticipated actions of
public and regulatory policymakers (Mettler & Sorelle, 2014; Walker & Rea, 2014). Therefore,
firms have three key considerations when it comes to determining when and how to mobilize
corporate stakeholders: (1) which policies need to be changed, (2) which public institutions and
policymakers ought to be most receptive to that change, which will need additional prodding and
encouragement, and which will not be receptive to that change irrespective of the firm and its
Stakeholder
Identification
Firm uses its
resources to identify
potential mobilizable
stakeholders
Baysinger (1984), Keim et
al. (1984), & Lord (2003)
Stakeholder
Motivation
Firm uses its knowledge
of stakeholders to
induce their
mobilization
Baysinger (1984), Keim et
al. (1984), & Lord (2003)
Political
Action
Stakeholders
directly &
indirectly lobby
regulators and
their elected
representatives
Target
Assessment
Firm determines
which policymakers
will be most
receptive to their
policy preferences
Tusk (2018) & Walker
& Rea (2014)
Employee Data
Firm uses its HR data to
identify mobilizable
employees
Heath et al. (1995)
Customer Data
Firm uses its customer
data to identify
mobilizables
Hertel-Fernandez (2018)
External
Targeting
Firm uses its knowledge
of the community to
identify mobilizables
Walker (2014)
Stakeholder
Education
Firm uses its resources
to educate mobilizables
about the policy issue
Baysinger (1984), Keim et
al. (1984), & Lord (2003)
Call
Email
Social
Media Post
Public
Comment
Petition
Protest
Shareholder Data
Firm uses its shareholder
data to identify
mobilizables
Baysinger et al. (1985) & Keim
et al. (1984)
Vote
Personalized
Letter
Op-Ed
Stakeholders take one or more of these
constituency building actions to
influence policy makers.
Baysinger (1984), Keim et al. (1984), Lord (2003), Heath et al. (1995)
Hertel-Fernandez (2018), Tusk (2018), & Walker (2014)

39
stakeholder’s actions, and finally, (3) which stakeholders will be the most effective and efficient
to mobilize to successfully influence the specific public and/or regulatory policymakers that are
being targeted by the firm. These initial targeting decisions guide the decisions that follow in the
corporate grassroots mobilization process.
Next, firms need to identify potential stakeholders that can be mobilized. This process
can consist of an evaluation of broad stakeholder positions derived from stakeholder mapping
(Freeman, 1984); however, with the proliferation of sophisticated employee, investor, and
customer information databases, as well as social media and geolocation platforms that sell vast
amounts of information on millions of individual users to business customers, firms are now able
to build psychological and political profiles of stakeholders to ascertain if they would be inclined
to politically mobilize on behalf of the firm (Hertel-Fernandez, 2018; Stempeck, 2015; Walker,
2014).
Nevertheless, as Keim et al. (1984) explain in their seminal work on grassroots
mobilization, there are three approaches to identifying stakeholders with shared interests. The
first is where firms identify stakeholders who are prepared to take immediate action (i.e., are
ready to politically mobilize). In this approach, firms send out a political communication to
stakeholders, wherein firms educate them about grassroots mobilization in general and the issue
at hand in particular. Firms then ask only those stakeholders who are truly interested in
mobilizing to respond to the communication. This approach allows firms to, relatively easily and
efficiently, develop a list of readily mobilizable stakeholders.
The second approach to identifying mobilizable stakeholders focuses more on their long-
term identification and cultivation as opposed to their immediate identification and mobilization,
as is the case in the first approach (Keim et al., 1984). In this longer-term approach, stakeholders

40
receive a communication from a given firm inquiring as to whether the stakeholder would be
interested in receiving information on the various policy issues affecting the firm. Oftentimes,
this more incremental approach begins with the firm contacting a specific group of stakeholders
(e.g., employees, shareholders, corporate PAC contributors, etc.) within a specific locale (e.g., a
relevant congressional district, where the policy issue is being had). From there, firms utilizing
this approach will typically expand their efforts to encompass other relevant stakeholders who
are in some way affected (either directly or indirectly) by the policy issue. The ultimate objective
in this longer-term approach is to build a broader base of stakeholder support over the long haul
through the cultivation of genuine stakeholder relations (Keim et al., 1984).
The third and final approach to identifying mobilizable stakeholders, which Keim et al.,
(1984) illustrate, is a combination of both the first and second approaches. That is, a firm may
focus on immediately mobilizing employees, customers, shareholders, and/or corporate PAC
contributors who can be rapidly deployed, because of their proximity to and relationship with the
firm, as well as their understanding of the given policy issue. A firm can also simultaneously
implement a broad-based and long-term approach to stakeholder mobilization by developing
rapport with other stakeholders not as proximate to the firm through continuous communication
and education (as it relates to the policy issues affecting the firm and the implication of these
policy issues on the given stakeholder).
Once potentially mobilizable stakeholders are identified, a firm must begin to focus its
attention on educating these stakeholders in both the immediate and long term (Keim et al.,
1984). To this end, a firm should provide stakeholders with detailed information as it pertains to
the various policy issues affecting the company, as well as their implications (for the firm and
the stakeholder). This information should be balanced and as impartial as possible, so as not to

41
make stakeholders feel manipulated (Keim, 1985; Keim et al., 1984; Lord, 2003). It should also
inform stakeholders about the details regarding proposed legislation, as well as the voting record
and political inclination of specific legislators and/or public bureaucrats concerning the issue.
One medium for communicating this information to stakeholders is a regular constituent
newsletter (Keim et al., 1984). Additionally, when educating stakeholders through a chosen
medium of communication (e.g., a newsletter), it is important that a firm articulates the necessity
of stakeholders providing their feedback directly to policy makers, as well as the most
appropriate manner for communicating their policy preferences to these public officials. To the
extent possible, these communications should also explain aspects of the political process
germane to the given policy issue.
To induce stakeholder mobilization, it is not sufficient for firms to simply identify and
educate stakeholders about at given policy issue, rather firms also have to motivate stakeholders
to take political action. Thus, utilizing a stakeholder’s psychological and political profile, firms
can determine the best way to engender their political mobilization. Firms can do so through
appealing to an individual stakeholder’s self-interest, collective/shared interest with others, moral
inclinations, sociopolitical preferences, as well as their perception of firm credibility (Haley,
1996; Hammond, 1987; Snow et al., 1986; Suchman, 1995; Tost, 2011).
Additionally, firms can also politically motivate stakeholders by sending them alert
messages a means to both inform and remind them of the urgent need to contact their elected
representative directly (Keim et al., 1984). These messages are typically sent out at least a week
prior to the markup of a bill, committee vote, or floor vote. This gives stakeholders sufficient
time to prepare and ultimately take the desired political action, whilst not being so early that the
issue loses its salience or stakeholders simply forget to take action. These political alert messages

42
should include the targeted political official’s name, position, political affiliation, and contact
information (e.g., office phone number, email, address, etc.). They should also include a
statement rearticulating the firm’s position on the given policy issue and why the firm holds that
position; however, the alert message should not dictate to the stakeholder the position that they
ought to take on the policy issue (Keim et al., 1984). By not attempting to dictate what a
stakeholder’s policy preferences on a given issue must be, the firm protects itself from potential
backlash.
Finally, once stakeholders have been motivated (i.e., induced) by firms to actually take
political action, they need guidance and assistance in directly contacting policymakers. Firms
facilitate this process by which stakeholders lobby regulators and their elected legislators on their
behalf. Ultimately, they provide stakeholders with the following direct and indirect means by
which to communicate their policy preferences to public officials: emails, calls, petitions, letters,
social media posts, public comments, protests, Op-Ed pieces, and voting (Phone2Action, 2017).
The extant literature has not simply explored the process of grassroots mobilization,
rather it has also investigated how certain stakeholders are politically mobilized by firms, as well
as for what reasons they agree to mobilize. Of the stakeholders explored in the literature,
particular attention has been given to shareholders, employees, community members, and
surprisingly (to a lesser degree) customers. In the following sections, I review what we have
learned with respect to the mobilization of these different groups of grassroots stakeholders.
Mobilizing Shareholders. In their classic study, Baysinger et al. (1985) affirm that
shareholders are a natural firm stakeholder whose interests are oftentimes aligned with that of the
firm in which they have invested. As such, they assert that shareholders are a valuable human
resource of the firm, which can be employed in influencing policy makers. With the opportunity

43
to leverage shareholders in pursuing political ends in mind, Baysinger et al. (1985) explore the
feasibility and potential effect of mobilizing shareholders as a grassroots stakeholder
constituency. In their work, they address this question through an examination of the attitudes of
2,151 shareholders from six major corporations. In general, the findings of Baysinger et al.
(1985) provide important insight. Firstly, their findings seem to indicate that indeed shareholders
are an important stakeholder to target for grassroots political mobilization insofar as they tend to
(1) perceive corporate executives as a credible source of information, (2) be supportive of CPA
in general, and (3) be willing to engage in corporate constituency programs. Secondly, Baysinger
et al. (1985) find that shareholders who have been exposed to public policy information from the
firm in which they are invested – particularly when the firm engages in regular communications
through a formal, well-developed constituency program – appear to have a more positive
perception concerning corporate grassroots mobilization campaigns and are more willing to
involve themselves therein when compared to shareholders who lack such exposure. Thirdly, the
study demonstrates that shareholders appear to be more politically active in comparison to the
general public. Finally, Baysinger et al. (1985) show that there is heterogeneity in shareholder
sub-groups’ specific responses to constituency building.
Keim et al. (1984) also contribute to our understanding of the political mobilization of
shareholders by firms. In their study, they examine the attitudes and characteristics of 2,151
shareholders who responded to a survey that they administered. These respondents were
investors in 6 major corporations within controversial industries (i.e., energy, chemical, and
forest product). Similarly to Baysinger et al. (1985), the findings of Keim et al. (1984, p. 58)
indicate “that shareholders: (1) support corporate political activity, (2) believe the corporation is
a credible source of information, (3) are interested in the corporate viewpoint, and (4)

44
demonstrate characteristics that prepare them for a role in the constituency programs of the
corporation.”
Mobilizing Employees. When it comes to employees, the constituency building literature
has found that they are an important and mobilizable human resource. A formative work on this
phenomenon (i.e., firm pollical mobilization of employees) is that of Heath et al. (1995). In this
study, Heath and colleagues (1995) investigate the types of employees that are likely to
participate in corporate constituency building efforts. They also attempt to account for the
relationship between the variables leading to employee participation in grassroots campaigns. To
this end, Heath et al. (1995) survey 198 employees selected from 80 Fortune 500 companies.
Their questionnaire ultimately yields some interesting and important results. For example, they
find that employees with a substantial degree of organizational commitment (which they define
based on each employee's position in the corporate organizational hierarchy, amount of company
stock owned in the firm, and tenure with the company), a prior record of political activism
outside of the firm, an inclination towards seeking political information and a desire to be
informed about public policy matters affecting their firm, a significant amount of cognitive
involvement (i.e., the extent to which employees believe that a corporate public policy issue
affects their self-interest), and a willingness to support corporate public policy efforts are more
likely to participate in their firm’s constituency building campaigns. In summary, the results of
Heath et al. (1995) identify the importance of perceived self-interest and a sense of
organizational commitment or personal self-efficacy when it comes to an employee’s willingness
to engage in a grassroots political effort.
As has been introduced above, the work of Hertel-Fernandez (2016, 2017, 2018), within
the realm of political science, has helped to advance our understanding of how firms engage their

45
employees in grassroots mobilization. However, Hertel-Fernandez’s most recent work (i.e.,
Hertel-Fernandez, 2018) has been the most helpful in this regard. In this study, Hertel-Fernandez
(2018) interviews 34 corporate government affairs officers and 9 business associations. And he
surveys approximately 500 corporate managers, 1,500 employees, and 101 senior Congressional
staffers to comprehend employee mobilization. In summary, Hertel-Fernandez (2018) discovers
that (1) employee mobilization is an increasingly common way for firms to reshape US policy
and elections, (2) employee mobilization is very effective at influencing policy makers, and (3)
employee mobilization is normatively problematic, thus deserving an adequate policy response.
More specifically, Hertel-Fernandez (2018) demonstrates that 25% of employees
surveyed indicated that they have received political messages or requests from their managers
and roughly 50% of managers reported having done something to engage their employees in US
politics. Of the employees who received political communications from their employers,
approximately 30% reported having received communications encouraging them to vote,
approximately 20% of them reported having received communications encouraging them to
register to vote, while the least commonly reported communications had to do with campaign
contributions (Hertel-Fernandez, 2018). Hertel-Fernandez (2018) also found that corporate
managers are of the opinion that employee mobilization is as effective as hiring lobbyists and is
more effective than PAC contributions, buying political ads, and lobbying through the US
Chamber of Commerce. Finally, Hertel-Fernandez’s (2018) study demonstrates that employee
mobilization can complement other political strategies.
Mobilizing Customers and Local Community Members. Customers and local community
members are extremely important grassroots stakeholders who have been virtually ignored in the
constituency building literature. With the exception of Walker (2014), we know very little about

46
the process, mechanisms, and issues related to politically mobilizing these stakeholders. In his
book, Walker (2014) graciously begins to elucidate how firms are able to mobilize customers
and local community members within a charged political climate. Examining the case of
Walmart’s campaign to enter New York City (where the firm had been prevented from entering
for some time), Walker (2014) finds that despite opposition from local city officials, community
organizations, labor organizations, small businesses, and social movement organizations,
Walmart was able to successfully organize and execute a grassroots mobilization campaign,
which was comprised of local community members and community organizations sympathetic to
Walmart’s cause.
Essentially, as Walker (2014) explains, Walmart leveraged its Community Action
Network – which was the company’s internal function responsible for facilitating
community/stakeholder engagement on political issues germane to the performance and survival
of the firm – to solicit the support of customers and local community members in the formation
of a broad-based grassroots coalition that would advocate for the right of Walmart to bring its
stores to the City of New York. To this end, Walmart’s Community Action Network employed a
grassroots political strategy that “involved a combination of recruiting petition signers,
partnering with local community organizations, and issuing publications, flyers, and leaflets in
order to enlist members of the public to contact local officials” (Walker, 2014, p. 117). This
multipronged grassroots strategy was ultimately successful in winning the support of
representatives from the New York City Housing Authority Tenants Association, the Real Estate
Board, as well as local ethnic organizations like the NAACP, which eventually gave Walmart the
social legitimacy it needed to organize a massive pro-Walmart rally at New York’s City Hall.
Protesting in favor of the firm, Walmart’s local constituents argued that the company’s presence

47
in their community would create jobs and provide affordable groceries, thereby enhancing public
safety, public health, and economic growth.
Although Walker’s (2014) detailed case analysis is helpful in allowing us to account for
some of the strategic tactics that firms utilize to convince their customers and local community
members to mobilize on policy issues on their behalf, it falls short of explicitly delineating the
psychological mechanisms at work in this process, as well as the firm-level capabilities
important to employing this political tactic.
As it relates to the role of firmographic capabilities in the corporate grassroots
mobilization of customers, Jia and Mayer (2016) theoretically further the work of Walker (2014).
They argue that firms can leverage their market-oriented capabilities (i.e., in R&D and/or
marketing) and consumer focus (i.e., in business-to-business or business-to-consumer operations)
to politically mobilize their customers (as well as other grassroots stakeholders). Jia and Mayer
(2016) assert that by drawing upon their ability to persuade consumers to purchase a product
and/or service, business-to-consumer firms can use their expertise in market segmentation and
target marketing to identify (1) which of their consumers/stakeholders would be most likely to
support their policy agenda and (2) which individualized inducements would eventually lead to
their political mobilization.
Advancing the work of Walker (2014), Jia and Mayer (2016) bring to our attention the
importance of both firm-level capabilities and accounting for the specific psychological
mechanisms involved in engendering stakeholder mobilization – although they do not explicitly
articulate these mechanisms, as it pertains to the latter. Nevertheless, in building on Jia and
Mayer (2016), Johnson et al. (2021) explicitly begin to articulate these psychological
mechanisms with respect to consumers’ willingness to participate in corporate organized

48
grassroots mobilization campaigns. Similarly, Culpepper and Thelan (2019) further Jia and
Mayer’s (2016) work on how firmographic market capabilities can be leveraged as political
capabilities in mobilizing customers.
In their recently published paper, Johnson and colleagues (2021) investigate why
customers are willing to politically mobilize in forwarding the political interests of companies
from which they purchase products and/or services. To answer this important question, they
conduct a 3-pronged experimental analysis. The first study uses interviews with actual customers
who recently participated in a corporate organized grassroots political campaign to ascertain the
antecedents for their engagement. The major antecedent to emerge from this study is that of
brand loyalty. As Johnson et al. (2021) explain, when reflecting upon their interview data,
customers’ brand loyalty helps them align their personal interests with the political objectives of
the firm, and as such, positively affects the likelihood that consumers would respond to the
brand’s call for grassroots political action. In addition to brand loyalty, the qualitative results also
show that value congruency, issue salience, task complexity, issue type, and information seeking
are important antecedents for consumers to engage in corporate grassroots mobilization efforts.
Johnson et al. (2021) use these interview-based findings to develop two experimental
tests. Using mTurk, these researchers employ vignettes to simulate 320 US-based participants’
engagement, as consumers, in a corporate grassroots mobilization campaign. In sum, Study 2
finds that brand loyalty is a key motivator of consumers’ political engagement in corporate
organized grassroots mobilization efforts – with both direct and indirect effects through its
impact on issue salience, information seeking behavior, and its interaction with the issue type.
Building on Study 2, Study 3 examines the extent to which consumer participation in corporate
organized grassroots mobilization campaigns is associated with increased brand loyalty. In this

49
study, Johnson et al. (2021) find a positive relationship thereof. From their perspective, this
indicates that customers’ participation in a firm’s grassroots mobilization effort serves as a
relationship building activity and an essential dimension of the longer process of social exchange
between the brand and its consumers.
Adopting a more firm-centric approach, political scientists Culpepper and Thelan (2019)
explore the emergence of a nascent tech-mediated form of corporate grassroots mobilization,
which Stempeck (2015) refers to as user lobbying. In their view, platform-based firms have not
only affected the ways in which markets operate (e.g., through peer-to-peer market exchanges,
social media engagement, or knowledge sharing), but they have also substantially impacted how
corporate political strategies are implemented. Fundamentally, Culpepper and Thelan (2019)
argue that successful platforms – who have achieved reasonable economic scale (e.g., Airbnb,
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Uber, etc.) – can leverage this unique market capability to
politically mobilize their numerous customers to forward their agenda. Given their distinctive
connection to customers and their customers’ attachment to and reliance upon their services,
platforms (relative to their traditional counterparts) are better equipped to convince, organize,
and deploy their customers as political operatives. This confers a distinctive form of power upon
these companies, which Culpepper and Thelan (2019) fittingly call platform power.
Finally, legal scholars have also begun to unearth tech-mediated corporate grassroots
mobilization tactics utilized for mobilizing both customers and societal stakeholders (i.e.,
citizens, community members, etc.). Orozco (2016), for example, illustrates the emergence of
legal crowdsourcing (or lawsourcing), wherein firms/entrepreneurs use social media platforms to
educate their customers and tertiary (i.e., societal) stakeholders about their legal/policy
challenges in the hopes of garnering stakeholders’ grassroots political support through social

50
media campaigns, online petitions, etc. Like user lobbying, Orozco (2016) affirms that the
strategic practice of lawsourcing is becoming an ever-prominent tactic within the corporate
political landscape.
Advocacy Advertising. Advocacy advertising, the second tactic described by Hillman and
Hitt (1999), is a form of public communication (typically through an advertisement) used by
firms that attempts to influence public opinion on specific political and/or economic issues
germane to firms’ performance (Sethi, 1981). If developed and employed properly, advocacy
advertisements will clearly and succinctly articulate the stance of the firm on a given policy
issue, why the firm has taken this stance, and how the issue affects the public (Sethi, 1981).
However, the reality is that advocacy advertisements are typically presented in an adversarial
manner (Sethi, 1978). That is, firms usually present, and aggressively defend, only their side of
the policy debate, completing ignoring (i.e., not articulating) the other(s). Ultimately, firms
utilizing advocacy advertising want to defend the firms modus operandi and activities, whilst
transforming public attitudes concerning the firm from that of skepticism to trust. Although some
advocacy advertising campaigns focus on changing public attitudes towards the firm and its
activities over the long-term, others focus on winning public support on a current/salient policy
issue. Despite this difference in the horizon of influence “… all advocacy ad campaigns share
certain common characteristics in terms of corporate posture, depiction of the adversary, and
claim to social legitimacy through identification with widely held social beliefs or representation
of public interest” (Sethi, 1978). In brief, this approach to politically influencing stakeholders is
fundamentally different from political education programs, wherein firms present a much more
balanced argument by educating stakeholders on all of the competing positions within a given
policy debate (Keim, 1981).

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As Sethi (1978) explains, the use of this political tactic really began to increase in the
1970s. During the period of 1970 to 1975, there was an increase in total corporate institutional
advertising from $149 million to $210 million (It is important to note that these figures do not
include institutional advertising conducted by industry organizations and trade associations.).
Most of the expenditure during that period, came from large corporate entities – such as: Texaco,
Standard Oil, AT&T, IBM, General Electric, etc. – which, at the time, generated much
controversy and debate. The prevalence of advocacy advertising amongst large corporations
continues to be the reality today; however, the proliferation of ICTs is making it easier for
smaller entrepreneurial firms to begin employing this tactic.
Irrespective of the size of the firm using advocacy advertising, the rationale for doing so
falls into one or more of the following four categories: (1) to counteract public hostility to
corporate activities because of ignorance, (2) to counteract the spread of misleading information
by critics and to fill the need for greater explication of complex issues, (3) to foster the values of
the free enterprise system, and (4) to counteract inadequate access to and bias in the news media
(Sethi, 1978). These four rationales are the antecedents that induce a firm to institute advocacy
advertising campaigns.
Marketing Approaches to Advocacy Advertising. Since the work of Sethi (1978, 1981),
within the field of strategy, there has been virtually no research explicitly focusing on advocacy
advertising; however, within the field of marketing, scholars have stepped forward to fill this
lacuna. One such study is that of Haley (1996). In his qualitative work, Haley (1996) conducts 97
interviews with consumers to understand how they make sense of firm sponsorship of advocacy
messages. He asserts that firms engage in advocacy advertising for three reasons. Either they
have a genuine interest in social welfare, they want to be viewed by consumers as a socially

52
responsible company, or they would like to deflect criticism and possible regulation (Haley,
1996). With respect to consumers' understandings of firm sponsorship of advocacy messages,
Haley (1996) ultimately finds that the consumer's perceptions of the firm, the issue, and
themselves play a major role in this regard.
In sum, Haley’s (1996) findings first demonstrate that an important element of
consumers’ understanding of advocacy advertising is their perception of the relationship between
the firm and the customer. Consumers perceived firms as good sponsors of advocacy messages if
the company was recognizable and likable, if it demonstrated understanding of the consumer,
and if the values of the firm were consistent with the values of the consumer. A second essential
element of consumers’ understanding of advocacy advertising is the relationship between the
firm and the policy issue. To trust advocacy advertising consumers must find the presence of the
following four dimensions: logical association, expertise, personal investment, and intent. That
is, for advocacy advertising to influence consumers the sponsoring firm must have some
identifiable relevance to the issue for which it is advocating, it must have expertise in the given
policy domain, the firm needs to have personal/organizational investment in the issue, and its
intent or mission/ethos must be consistent with its policy position. The third and final important
element of consumers’ understanding of advocacy advertising is their perception of the
relationship between the public policy issue and the consumer. From Haley’s (1996) qualitative
analysis the following four themes emerge regarding what is needed for a consumer to trust a
given advocacy advertisement: (1) the importance of the issue to a given consumer personally,
(2) the importance of issue to society, (3) the extent to which a given consumer believes their
action can help, and (4) the extent to which a given consumer believes that no one can help.

53
To theoretically substantiate his study, Haley (1996) draws upon the source credibility
literature. Source credibility has to do with the extent to which a message recipient views the
message sender (i.e., the source of the message) as credible (Anderson, 1971). In general, this
literature has shown that different perceptions of source credibility “…differentially affect
message evaluation, attitude change, behavioral intentions and behavioral compliance (Haley,
1996, p. 20)” depending on the given situation. As Haley (1996) further explains with regards to
the mediating factors between source credibility and receiver message perception, the receiver’s
initial position (i.e., attitude toward the advocated position of the firm) on the policy issue, the
discrepancy between the receiver's initial opinion relative to that of the firm, and how the
receiver's attitude toward the issue was formed, all impact the receiver’s message perception.
Similarly, receiver characteristics like the receiver’s locus of control, authoritarianism,
involvement and learning style, affect the receiver’s perception of source credibility. In addition,
to receiver characteristics there are also contextual factors, which have an impact on message
credibility from the perspective of the receiver, such as: the timing of the source introduction,
levels of physical or social threat, message incongruity, presence of evidence, comparative
claims, message comprehension, and distraction from message (Haley, 1996).
Prior to the work of Haley (1996), other researchers explored the effect of the
organizational sponsorship of advocacy advertising on receivers’ perceptions of source
credibility. In brief, these studies found that advocacy advertisements sponsored by firms are
viewed as less credible than advocacy advertisements sponsored by nonprofit or government
entities (Haley & Wilkinson, 1994; Hammond, 1987; Lynn et al., 1978; Reid, et al., 1981).
While subsequent research examined the differential impact of commercial (i.e., firm) sponsors
of advocacy advertisements on receiver message perception. For instance, Haley and Wilkinson

54
(1994) found that the advocacy advertisements of firms with a clear vested interest in a given
public policy issue were perceived by receivers as being considerably more credible when
compared to those messages sponsored by firms lacking an obvious vested interest in the issue.
Sinclair and Irani (2005) and Miller and Sinclair (2009) extend the work of Haley (1996).
In their article, Sinclair and Irani (2005) affirm the fact that the purpose of advocacy advertising
is to promote the point of view of the firm. They assert that the focus of advocacy advertising is
to preserve the image of the company, while deflecting criticism of the organization in terms of
its policies, products, and services. Moreover, Sinclair and Irani (2005) explain that advocacy
ads can be classified into three types. That is, (1) political, (2) marketplace, and (3) value
advocacy ads. As Sinclair and Irani (2005) explicate, political advocacy ads are used by firms
seeking support for a particular public policy issue or political candidate who is amenable to the
interests of the firm. Marketplace advocacy ads seek to address or at least attenuate potential or
existing consumer concerns regarding a firm’s product(s)/service(s), business practices, or
manufacturing processes. Ultimately, companies using marketplace advocacy ads want to
establish consumer acceptance for a product or service (Note: Marketplace advocacy ads are
typically used by firms promoting risk-related products, such as: coal, oil, gas, alcohol, tobacco,
pharmaceuticals, etc.). While firms employ value advocacy ads, which highlight certain
organizational principles, such as hard work, honesty, integrity, etc. (or feature individuals who
embody such values) to deflect criticism of the company. Essentially, value advocacy ads are
less strategic than political and marketplace advocacy ads in that they do not seek to explicitly
engender support for a firm’s political or marketplace agenda, but rather to associate the firm
with accepted societal values. Albeit political, marketplace, and value advocacy ads are distinct

55
to a certain degree, it is important to assert that they are not mutually exclusive. In practice, they
oftentimes appear in combination as opposed to in one pure form.
Building on Haley (1996), Sinclair and Irani (2005) conduct a quantitative analysis
investigating advocacy advertising (i.e., marketplace advocacy ads) in the biotech industry. They
argue that, with the proliferation of technology, marketplace advocacy ads are becoming all the
more important as mechanisms to assuage the concern of consumers as it pertains to the usage of
these nascent technologies in the process of bringing new products and services to market. In this
study, Sinclair and Irani (2005) theorize that given public concern over the implications of new
technologies on products/services, the extent to which a given firm will be trusted is of the
utmost import. Fundamentally, a company’s credibility (or lack thereof) will have a significant
impact on consumer responses to marketplace advocacy ads. One avenue for gaining consumer
confidence as a firm is through the construct of public accountability. “Public accountability is
defined as an audience's perceptions of the relations between three key elements: the
organization, the issue, and rules” (Sinclair & Irani, 2005, p. 61). Thus, to be publicly
accountable, companies have to be answerable to consumers regarding their obligations, duties,
and expectations.
In sum, the findings of Sinclair and Irani (2005) indicate that marketplace advocacy ads
are most effective when communicating information as it relates to public accountability. To be
more specific, they demonstrate that these types of messages are most successful “when they
emphasize (1) that there are clear stringent government regulations that apply to the product and
the processes involved in its development, and (2) that companies are concerned about
complying with these regulations and protecting the public interest (Sinclair & Irani, 2005, pp.
68-69).

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Miller and Sinclair (2009) further the work on advocacy advertising (i.e., marketplace
advocacy ads) in general – and that of Sinclair and Irani (2005) in particular – by focusing on the
implications of this type of corporate communication on local community stakeholders (as
opposed to consumers) who they refer to as a relatively knowledgeable audience. Community
stakeholders are individuals who live in close proximity to a given company, and as such, they
are affected by the firm and in-turn affect the firm. These stakeholders are also in a unique
position where they can generate or withhold support for the public policy agenda of the local
firm; for these reasons, community stakeholders are common targets for marketplace advocacy
campaigns.
The findings of Miller and Sinclair (2009) indicate that the success of marketplace
advocacy ads with community stakeholders is predicated upon these stakeholders’ beliefs about
the particular advertiser, as well as their beliefs about the industry in general. Additionally,
advertiser trustworthiness and industry accountability emerged as important mechanisms for
fostering a positive response towards marketplace advocacy ads on the part of community
stakeholders. Be it the fact that a given firm has been embedded within a local community for a
period of time, Miller and Sinclair (2009) also find that community stakeholders are typically
knowledgeable about the ways in which the firm behaves. As such, community stakeholders are
keenly aware that they need to summon this prior knowledge when interpreting the potential
motives underlying the given advocacy campaign and the actual outcomes that might result.
However, the most important contribution of Miller and Sinclair (2009), to the constituency
building literature in general, is not their empirical findings per se, but the introduction they
provide to the Persuasion Knowledge Model or PKM (Campbell & Kirmani 2000; Friestad &
Wright 1994; Kirmani & Campbell 2004).

57
The PKM is an extraordinarily important model that can help constituency building
scholars (particularly scholars of grassroots mobilization) better comprehend the psychological
mechanisms essential for firms to induce the mobilization of their grassroots stakeholders. In
essence, this conceptual framework explicitly focuses on stakeholders’ knowledge of a
persuasive agent’s goals and tactics (Campbell & Kirmani 2000; Friestad & Wright 1994;
Kirmani & Campbell 2004). As the model explains, this knowledge is of three different types:
(1) topic knowledge, (2) agent knowledge, and (3) persuasion knowledge. Topic knowledge
refers to the stakeholder’s beliefs about message arguments. Agent knowledge is related to the
stakeholder’s beliefs about the specific goals and characteristics of the firm (i.e., the persuasive
agent). While persuasion knowledge encompasses the stakeholder’s beliefs about the purposes of
persuasive tactics, their own goals, as well as the possible actions that they can take in managing
the firm’s persuasive attempt.
As it relates to the ability of stakeholders to manage the persuasive attempts of firms, the
PKM provides theorization in this regard, which it refers to as (stakeholder) coping. As Miller
and Sinclair (2009, p. 39) explain, in summarizing the contributions of Friestad and Wright
(1994),
“many different goals may drive responses to persuasion attempts. In some cases, people
may pursue identity goals, such as managing other people’s impressions or managing
their own self-images. In other situations, people may primarily seek to manage the
experiential benefits of the persuasion episode and enjoy the sensory, cognitive, or
emotional stimulation it provides. Still another coping goal is managing one’s long-term
relationship with the marketer. Consumers may seek to manage this relationship, for
example, by developing and maintaining accurate attitudes toward the marketer so they
can better assess its motives and future behavior.”

Future theoretical work on grassroots mobilization should draw upon the credibility,
public accountability, and PKM literatures to develop a deeper understanding of the
psychological mechanisms that are necessary for firms to engender the political mobilization of

58
their stakeholders at the grassroots level. In so doing, we will be able to develop conceptual
frameworks that elucidate both the steps and mechanisms associated with the corporate
stakeholder mobilization process.
Public Relations. The third constituency building tactic is that of public relations. Public
relations – as is defined in the strategy literature – is essentially the manner in which firms
communicate their vision of themselves to the public (Sethi, 1981). Although public relations is
one of the important constituency building tactics that Hillman and Hitt (1999) include in their
typology of corporate political strategies, beyond defining this tactic, the CPA literature has been
relatively quiet. Therefore, it is essential that we begin to draw upon the public relations
literature within the field of communications to further develop our understanding of and
engagement with this political tactic.
Within the field of public relations, the aforementioned strategy definition of public
relations seems to be a relic of the past. Given the evolution of the public relations literature over
the last couple of decades, scholars within this domain have begun to depart from a more
functionalist approach to public relations with its focus on the organization’s effect on the public
through the strategic use of advertising, marketing, and media relations. Rather, recent theorizing
within public relations has adopted a more relational stance, wherein public relations is viewed
as a more reciprocal process of meaning making between the organization and its stakeholders
(Botan & Taylor, 2004). In the words of a leading public relations text, the public relations
function is “the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial
relationships between an organization and the publics on whom its success or failure depends”
(Cutlip, 1994, p. 2).

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Bearing this definition in mind, the work on public relations has affirmed that there is a
clear distinction between advocacy advertising on the one hand and public relations on the other.
As the popular saying within the field goes "Advertising is what you pay for, publicity is what
you pray for." In essence, advocacy advertising is a top-down form of communication, where the
firm singularly determines what a consumer or community member ought to think with regards
to a given policy issue. While firms employing public relations – as a reciprocal conversation –
have to listen to and be in-tune with the interests/policy positions of stakeholders in order to
comprehend the who, what, when, where, why, and how of engaging with each respective
stakeholder (Wynne, 2014).
Wynne (2014) provides a comparative assessment of advocacy advertising versus public
relations. He asserts that while advocacy advertising is paid public relations is earned, while
advocacy advertising builds exposure public relations builds trust, while advocacy advertising
leaves the audience (i.e., the public) skeptical public relations allows the media to provide third-
party validation, while advocacy advertising guarantees the precise articulation of a firm’s policy
position public relations does not provide such a guarantee insofar as the firm must convince the
media of its policy position (before the media will present/endorse the firm’s position publicly),
while advocacy advertising predominantly utilizes visuals to convey a policy position public
relations uses clear language in that regard, and while advocacy advertising is relatively
expensive public relations is relatively inexpensive.
Having provided a clear comparison of advocacy advertising versus public relations, it is
also essential to elucidate the mechanisms that facilitate the successful implementation of a
public relations campaign. Ledingham and Bruning (1998) do exactly this in their study.
Utilizing both qualitative and quantitative methods, they examine the relationship dimensions

60
upon which good organization-public/stakeholder relationships are initiated, developed, and
maintained. The participants in the study included 384 local telephone subscribers residing in
areas which were recently opened to competition for local telephone service. Ledingham and
Bruning (1998) show that the relationship dimensions of trust, openness, involvement,
commitment and investment in an organization-public relationship are significantly related to an
individual’s decision to stay with the current provider or sign-up with a new provider.
Furthermore, these findings seem to suggest that the extent to which a firm engages with and
supports its external stakeholders and the community in which it is embedded, the more those
stakeholders will reciprocate through supporting and being loyal to the firm; however, as
Ledingham and Bruning (1998) explain, for the firm to receive this form of support, it is
essential that the company clearly articulates and demonstrates how it engages with and supports
its external stakeholders. In essence, Ledingham and Bruning (1998) unearth a two-step process
wherein firms must (1) focus on the relationships with their key publics, and (2) communicate
involvement of those activities/programs that build the organization-public relationship to
members of their key publics.
Political Education Programs. Political education programs, the last tactic included in
Hillman and Hitt’s (1999) typology, are robust programs initiated by firms to educate their
stakeholders (employees in particular) about the importance of being politically active, how to be
politically active, the issues affecting the firm, how to register to vote, how to vote, etc. (Hertel-
Fernandez, 2018; Keim, 1985; Keim et al., 1984). They also help to place stakeholders in direct
communication with policy makers, thereby facilitating political communications between both
entities. These programs are distinct from advocacy advertising in a few key ways. Firstly, by
their very nature, political education programs are focused on the long-term cultivation of the

61
political interest, acumen, and engagement of firm stakeholders, which differs from the more
short-term issue focus of many advocacy advertising ads (although advocacy advertising
campaigns can sometimes have a longer-term focus). Secondly, while advocacy advertising ads
only present the policy position of a given firm (to the exclusion of other competing policy
positions on the same issue), political education programs inform organizational stakeholders
about the various positions on a given issue (as opposed to solely pushing the firm’s policy
position) (Keim, 1985). When done effectively, this more balanced approach insulates the firm
from being perceived by stakeholders as a coopting force.
In his classic work, Keim (1985) explains that the most successful political education
programs are the ones (1) where senior managers realize that their most precious political
resource is their people (i.e., stakeholders), (2) that employ persuasion instead of coercion in
educating stakeholders, (3) that regularly communicate with individual stakeholders to
inform/update them on relevant policy issues through some sort of newsletter, as well as the ones
(4) that present an objective discussion of the facts pertaining to a given policy issue within
stakeholder communications and facilitate regular meetings (i.e., monthly or bi-monthly) where
stakeholders can hear and engage with elected officials or corporate executives to discuss current
and future political issues.
Although it is important that scholars are able to identify what characteristics make
political education programs successful, it is also essential to understand how stakeholders
actually react to them. To this end, Keim et al. (1984) examine the attitudes of 2,151
stakeholders (i.e., shareholders) from six corporations within the chemical, energy, and forest
products industries regarding constituency building as a political strategy. With respect to
political education programs in particular, they find that shareholders who were participants in

62
such a program or who received public policy information on a regular basis from a company,
were far more interested in and supportive of political education programs when compared to
shareholders who did not have the same level of political interaction with a firm. Specifically, 90
percent of the respondents who had received some form of corporate political education wanted
the firms in which they had investments to provide them with political analyses of relevant
public policy issues. Although employees and retirees were not included in their sample, Keim et
al. (1984) argue that anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that these two stakeholder types would
also (on average) like to be involved in the political education program of their current/former
employer.
In general (and although extremely sparse), the literature on political education programs
demonstrates that the availability and consumption of information concerning policy issues
germane to the firm enhances the willingness of organizational stakeholders to become
politically active (Keim, 1985). Hence, firms would do well to invest in developing the
capabilities to effectively develop a robust political education program (Hertel-Fernandez, 2018;
Keim, 1985; Keim et al., 1984).
Summary. This review of the literature on the constituency building tactics clearly
reveals that from the inception of this area of interest within the strategy field, scholars have
been far more preoccupied with examining corporate grassroots mobilization as opposed to
advocacy advertising, public relations, or political education programs. Nevertheless, with the
increased usage of the constituency building tactics in the business world today, moving forward,
it is essential that corporate political strategy scholars increase their willingness to investigate all
of the tactics associated with constituency building at a much deeper level.

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Moreover, with the recent emergence and proliferation of ICTs, such as the internet,
email, digital marketing technologies, social media and e-commerce platforms, software
applications (i.e., apps), instant messaging, etc., a substantive shift is underway with regards to
how firms are mobilizing their stakeholders at the grassroots level. Anecdotal evidence seems to
indicate that firms of varying sizes (particularly high-growth startups) are employing
constituency building and are doing so in a more efficient and effective manner as a result of
ICTs. Unfortunately, however, we have yet to account for the actual effect of the diffusion of
these technologies on corporate constituency building efforts. Hence, as Lord (2000b, p. 305)
asserts “(an important) emerging research question is: how, or to what extent, might technology
be altering the dynamics of corporate constituency building as a corporate political strategy?”
Not fully ascertaining the impact of the proliferation and diffusion of ICTs on corporate
grassroots mobilization campaigns is problematic insofar as it impedes us from comprehending
the environmental and organizational factors essential to this process, the extent to which these
technologies have enhanced firms’ stakeholder mobilization capabilities, as well as the overall
effect of the political deployment of ICTs (in corporate grassroots mobilization efforts) on
democratic outcomes. Moreover, this new form of political capability, which was referred to by
Keim (1981) and Baysinger (1984) as a ‘new political technology’ for firms, has historically
been viewed predominantly as the purview of large well-resourced firms (Hertel-Fernandez,
2018; Walker, 2014); however, ICTs seem to be democratizing the ability of firms of varying
sizes (e.g., startups) to employ the corporate grassroots mobilization tactic as part of their
political strategy. However, hitherto, this phenomenon has remained relatively unexplored.
Pursuant to this goal, in the subsequent chapter, I provide the first empirical examination of the

64
emergence and antecedents associated with this nascent and increasingly important tech-
mediated constituency building tactic.

CONCLUSION

To conclude, this chapter contributes to the CPA literature (in general) and the
constituency building literature (in particular) in very important ways. First, it provides the first
detailed review of the academic literature on constituency building. Second, this paper
synergizes constituency building research across the following fields: strategy, sociology,
political science, marketing, and public relations. Third, it proposes a common language that can
be used across the aforementioned disciplines in discussing constituency building. Finally, this
chapter sheds light on the necessity for constituency building scholars to begin empirically
investigating the emergent tech-mediated approach to constituency building, which is believed to
be becoming ever prominent amongst high-performing tech startups (in particular).

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CHAPTER 3
THE NEW AGE OF USER LOBBYING: EXPLORING CONSTITUENCY BUILDING
AMONGST HIGH GROWTH-TECHNOLOGY STARTUPS

INTRODUCTION

Firms have consistently demonstrated their willingness and ability to politically mobilize
their stakeholders at the grassroots level (e.g., employees, managers, retirees, shareholders,
customers, community members, etc.) to influence public policy outcomes in-line with their
organization’s political agenda (Heath et al., 1995; Hertel-Fernandez, 2016, 2017, 2018; Hillman
& Hitt, 1999; Keim, 1985; Keim et al., 1984; Lord, 2003; Walker, 2009, 2012, 2014). Recently,
however, we have seen a substantive increase in instances of this form of constituency building,
particularly as it relates to firms politically mobilizing their customers and platform users
through the use of ICTs (Stempeck, 2015; Culpepper & Thelan, 2019; Walker, 2015). For
instance, in 2012 internet technology firms like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft,
Reddit, Tumblr, and Twitter (to name a few) successfully mobilized their customers and users in
contacting their elected representatives – in both the US House of Representatives and Senate –
to prevent the passing of two legislative bills that would have significantly curbed internet
freedoms. At the state and local levels, ride-sharing firms Uber and Lyft have been mobilizing
their users in major metropolitan areas to challenge proposed municipal and state legislation that
would negatively affect the ability of these companies to operate. Similarly, home-sharing firm
Airbnb has been mobilizing both their hosts (i.e., homeowners) and customers to promote
policies that would protect their niche in the market, while bike- and scooter-sharing services
like Bird and Lime have mobilized customers to petition municipal governments unreceptive to
having bikes and scooters in their respective cities. As these cases show, numerous nascent high-

66
growth technology firms (i.e., tech startups) are increasingly engaging in a new form of
constituency building – one that Stempeck (2015) refers to as user lobbying – by relying on ICTs
to politically mobilize their customers and platform users on their behalf.
Hitherto, the extant literature on constituency building has demonstrated that some firms
are able to politically mobilize their stakeholders at the grassroots level to affect public policy
outcomes (Baysinger et al., 1985; Hillman & Hitt, 1999; Keim, 1985; Lord, 2000a). By inducing
stakeholder mobilization, firms are able to indirectly apply pressure on policymakers who are
oftentimes concerned about re-election (Baysinger et al., 1985; Keim, 1985). As such, corporate
grassroots mobilization is perceived by elected officials and their staffs as more effective than
other political strategies insofar as it provides them with direct feedback from their constituents,
who ultimately determine the politician’s tenure within their current political post (Lord, 2000a,
2000b). In addition to exposing its effectiveness, corporate constituency building scholarship has
also asserted that certain firm characteristics and factors are important to implementing a
grassroots effort. For example, Lord (2003) has argued that companies need sincere, credible,
deep, and broad-based grassroots political support to effectively mobilize stakeholders. Others
have argued that having a large employee (Heath et al., 1995; Hertel-Fernandez, 2016, 2018;
Hillman & Hitt, 1999) or customer (Lord, 2003) base is important to implement corporate
grassroots mobilization. Others have shown that the ability to publicly frame a policy position in
a way that coheres with that of a given public sentiment pool is important, whether the framing is
accurate or not (Murray et al., 2016). The most robust discussion to date concerning the firm-
level characteristics and factors important to utilizing corporate grassroots mobilization is
offered by Walker (e.g., 2012, 2014), whose work has shown that this political tactic is shaped
by a firm’s degree of direct lobbying (Walker, 2012), the extent to which a company appears as a

67
customer of a public affairs consultancy, the degree to which a firm is embroiled in public
controversies and protests, as well as the industry in which a firm is embedded (Walker, 2014).
Most importantly, as it relates to the current research, Walker (2014) has found that large tech
firms (i.e., S&P 500 tech companies) engage in a greater amount of corporate grassroots
mobilization than firms in other industries.
While prior research has begun to explore the role of firm and environmental factors on
the likelihood that a firm will engage in constituency building, important issues remain. First, the
current empirical work on constituency building has focused predominantly on large established
firms (e.g., Hertel-Fernandez, 2018; Walker, 2012, 2014). While studying large incumbent firms
(e.g., Fortune 500 firms) is a helpful way to initiate our investigation into empirically accounting
for the antecedents for constituency building, it clearly omits other types of firms that might also
be employing this political strategy (e.g., startups).
Second, while information technologies arguably play a key role in constituent
mobilization, prior work considered the effect of ICTs on this relationship (Lord, 2000a). This is
particularly relevant as ICTs may act to “level the playing field” by allowing startups to reach
large numbers of stakeholders at relatively little cost. The lack of empirical research examining
how some startups are using ICTs to engage in constituency building efforts with their users is
unfortunate insofar as it has inhibited us from comprehending user lobbying as an important
evolutionary phenomenological development within the constituency building process. Through
user lobbying, high- growth tech startups (e.g., Airbnb, Apple, Bird, Etsy, Lime, Lyft, Reddit,
etc.) have been able to utilize constituency building to good effect. The unique ability of these
companies to continuously stay connected to and in communication with their customers and
platform users in a relatively easy manner – through apps, social media, online forums, etc. –

68
may have given them a political advantage over incumbent firms in utilizing user lobbying.
Furthermore, the dearth of research on how tech firms employ their resources and capabilities to
engage in user lobbying is a major concern inasmuch as these firms are having an ever-greater
impact on how we use and consume technology, how we socialize, how companies compete, and
ultimately the political landscape at the global, regional, national, state, and local levels. Thus, by
investigating why and how high-growth tech startups are deploying their market resources and
capabilities to induce their customers and/or users’ political mobilization, we can better
understand the effect that ICT mediated constituency building (i.e., user lobbying) is having on
our lives, our society, and our democracy.
The importance of these two factors—newness and ICT—is also confirmed by anecdotal
evidence that suggests that tech startups have been prominent in adopting and implementing
constituency building to mobilize their customers and users (Wortham, 2012). This directly
contradicts the current assumption within the constituency building literature that to effectively
employ this political strategy firms need to be industry incumbents with a sizable employee,
customer, shareholder, and/or local community member base (e.g., Heath et al., 1995; Hertel-
Fernandez, 2018; Hillman & Hitt, 1999; Lord, 2003). In particular, high-growth tech startups
appear to be leveraging their emergent technological capabilities – including their e-commerce
platforms, social media accounts, website applications, websites, blogs, text messages, etc. – to
politically mobilize their customers and users to protect themselves from intrusive regulation and
social movement challenges oftentimes precipitated by incumbents within their respective
industry (Holburn & Raiha, 2017; Stempeck, 2015; Walker, 2015). Anecdotal evidence also

69
seems to indicate that some of the more disruptive
3
and controversial tech startups (e.g., sharing
economy firms) may be even more prone to using a constituency building political strategy than
other tech firms as a result of the amount of contestation that they engender from market (e.g.,
established firms) and nonmarket incumbents (e.g., labor unions, social movement actors,
policymakers, and regulatory bodies) (Stempeck, 2015). Moreover, circumstantial evidence also
seems to imply that some high-growth startups are more inclined to user lobby than others.
Motivated by these issues, I seek to answer the following question: why do some high-
growth tech startups attempt to mobilize their customers and users more than others?
To summarize, in answering the calls of Lord (2000a), Walker (2015), Jia and Mayer
(2016), and Holburn and Raiha (2017), I extend the theorizing on political markets and
capabilities (e.g., Bonardi et al., 2005; Kingsley et al., 2012) from the nonmarket strategy
literature by integrating it with field theory (e.g., Evans & Kay, 2008; Fligstein, 1996, 2001;
Fligstein & McAdam, 2011; Goldstone; 2004) from the social movements literature to better
understand the environmental and firm-level antecedents that lead high-growth startups to
engage in user lobbying. In so doing, I advance a theoretical model of transforming political
markets in which startups attempt to interrupt, compete within, and transform the competitive
markets in which they enter, and in which market (i.e., firms) and nonmarket incumbents (e.g.,
labor unions, policymakers, regulators, non-governmental organizations or NGOs, etc.)
politically respond to this encroachment – typically in an adversarial manner.
Using print media coverage of user lobbying attempts by unicorns (i.e., high-growth tech
startups with a valuation of $1 billion or more), I examine the extent to which a firm’s

3
A disruptive business model is where a startup, or an incumbent firm, creates a new and/or niche market by
improving upon or modifying existing business models within a given industry, and in so doing fills an unmet need
of consumers (Christensen & Raynor, 2003).

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competitive and regulatory environment (i.e., the types of contestation the firm is experiencing
from incumbents, unions, social movement actors, and regulatory bodies) and market-based
capabilities (i.e., business-to-consumer and platform capabilities), affect its propensity to engage
in user lobbying. In sum, my findings indicate that disruptive, sharing economy, and platform-
based high-growth startups (i.e., unicorns) are more likely to employ user lobbying than their
counterparts not possessing these characteristics.
Ultimately, this work contributes to the social movements, stakeholder management, and
nonmarket strategy literatures (e.g., Aranda & Simons, 2018; Hiatt et al., 2009; Leitzinger et al.,
2018; McDonnell & Werner, 2016; Soule, 2018) in general and research on constituency
building (Baysinger, 1984; Baysinger et al., 1985; Hertel-Fernandez, 2017, 2018; Hillman &
Hitt, 1999; Jia & Mayer, 2016; Keim, 1981; Keim, 1985; Keim et al., 1984; Lord, 2000a, 2000b,
2003; Lyon & Maxwell, 2004; Sethi, 1981; Walker, 2009, 2012, 2013, 2014) and the nonmarket
strategies of entrepreneurial firms in particular (Baron, 2018; Grandy & Hiatt, 2020; Hiatt et al.,
2018; Hiatt & Park, 2013; Ozcan & Gurses, 2015; Ozcan & Gurses, 2018).

LITERATURE REVIEW:
POLITICAL MARKETS, STARTUPS, AND STRATEGIC ACTION FIELDS

Political Markets

In elucidating the antecedents of firm political action, the CPS literature has drawn upon
the notions of supply and demand within markets to describe the instances in which firms engage
in politics. As this literature elaborates, similarly to business markets – where suppliers and
demanders pursue their economic interests through the exchange of goods, services, and/or
currency to procure other goods and/or services – political markets are comprised of suppliers
(e.g., legislators, the executive, regulators, and courts) and demanders (e.g., firms, consumers,

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and special interests) who are committed to advancing their political priorities (Bonardi et al.
2005; Buchanan, 1968, 1975, 1986, 1987, 1988; Hillman & Keim, 1995; Kingsley et al., 2012).
This interaction between policy suppliers and demanders manifests itself in the political
marketplace through the exchange of information, votes, and other valuable resources between
these parties, from which public and regulatory policy emerges.
Policy Suppliers. Policy suppliers comprise legislators, regulators, and bureaucrats at the
local, state, national, and supranational level (Bonardi et al. 2005). They provide public policy to
the political market taking into consideration their own interests and that of demanders. As it
relates to their particular stake in the political marketplace, legislators are interested in
maximizing their own welfare and maintaining commitment to their ideology and the interests of
their constituents (Grossman & Helpman, 1994; Kalt & Zupan, 1984). Essentially, in order to
stay in office, elected officials are truly in need of information on the policy preferences of their
constituents, direct votes from their constituents during elections, and financial support from
their constituents (and their political party) to run for office. Whilst regulators and bureaucrats do
not depend on votes and financial support from constituents (unlike elected officials), they are in
need of information and general support from constituents insofar as the preferences of the
public and organized interest groups have implications for future budgets, the range of
jurisdictional responsibility, and the prestige associated with a given agency/bureau (Bonardi et
al. 2005).
Policy Demanders. Policy demanders, on the other hand, expect certain policy or
regulatory outcomes from suppliers that cohere with their own interests. Demanders are
particularly interested in reducing or eliminating the effect of public and regulatory policy on
their profitability, survival, and all-around competitiveness. Hence, when in need of a particular

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policy or regulatory outcome, demanders participate in the political marketplace by offering
suppliers information, financial support, and/or votes in exchange for preferential policies and/or
regulations (Hillman & Hitt, 1999). The extent to which policy demanders are able to meet the
(informational, financial, and political) needs of policy suppliers, gives the former power and
influence over the latter when it comes to public and regulatory outcomes.
Prior to entering the political marketplace, demanders firstly have to ascertain as to
whether it is ultimately worth the time and investment to engage thereof. In similar fashion to
economic markets, there are certain characteristics that make political markets either attractive or
unattractive to demanders. As Bonardi et al. (2005) assert, political markets are more attractive
for firms (1) for nonelection issues than markets for election issues, (2) when advocating issues
with concentrated benefits and diffused costs or opposing issues with concentrated costs and
diffused benefits, and (3) when defending existing regulations or policies or when
advocating/opposing new issues than when challenging existing regulations or policies.
The political markets framework of Bonardi et al. (2005) is particularly useful in that it
goes beyond the implicit assumption that firm resources are solely what determine if a firm will
engage in the political marketplace, arguing that firms will also engage in the political
marketplace when the benefits of doing so exceed the costs of not. Furthermore, while Bonardi
and colleagues concede that firm resources affect whether a company engages in CPA, they also
recognize that situational and environmental factors play a role in determining if, when, and how
a firm engages politically. Beyond these basic insights, however, the political markets literature
does not offer a comprehensive theoretical account of the competitive dynamics that playout
between various types of policy demanders, as well as between policy demanders and policy
suppliers. Current theorizing within political markets also does not aid us in accounting for the

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competitive market and political dynamics that ensue when a startup acts as an insurgent by
challenging the competitive and social norms established in a given political market. Lastly,
political markets theorizing falls short of helping us to simultaneously account for the ways in
which both environmental factors and firm-level capabilities affect the corporate political actions
of firms in general and startups in particular.

Field Theory

Field theory (e.g., Evans & Kay, 2008; Fligstein, 1996, 2001; Fligstein & McAdam,
2011; Goldstone; 2004) from the social movements literature within sociology, however,
provides detailed theorizing as it focuses on the competitive dynamics of a given political market
– or what field theorists refer to as a strategic action field – as well as what happens when an
insurgent (e.g., a startup) disrupts the various market (e.g., established competitors) and
nonmarket field incumbents (e.g., unions, policymakers, regulators, NGOs, etc.) therein.
Similarly to the political markets literature, field theory views markets as politics (Fligstein,
1996). That is, market participants (e.g., firms, regulators, customers, etc.) engage in the
marketplace with the hopes of creating stability through finding solutions to the problem of
structuring competition. Essentially, there are three types of markets (i.e., nascent markets, stable
markets, and transforming markets) that field theorists speak of, each of which produces
different types of political interaction (Fligstein, 1996; 2001).
During the phase of market formation, firms are vying to create noncompetitive forms of
competition through enforcing a status hierarchy. This form of political engagement can be
likened to a social movement, wherein firms are collectively attempting to precipitate a new
social/market order. In stable markets, on the other hand, incumbent firms have succeeded at

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setting the social and regulatory rules of the game in concert with politicians and regulators; thus,
their modus operandi is to defend their positions (i.e., the status quo within the market) against
unwanted incursions by challengers or insurgents. Finally, during periods of market
transformation, challengers or insurgents behave like social movements insofar as they attempt
to reintroduce conditions that would bring about substantive change in the market, as it relates to
norms, products/services, processes, and/or regulations. For the purposes of examining the extent
to which being an insurgent startup – and a startup with capabilities consistent with constituency
building – affects a firm’s propensity to user lobby, in the current work, I draw upon field
theorizing around the notion of transforming markets.
Transforming Markets. Field (or market) incumbents are typically concerned with
maintaining the status quo. That is, they are committed to reproducing the social order (i.e.,
mutually agreed upon norms, values, rules, policies, regulations, etc.) that governs a given field
and helps to create stability therein as it relates to competition, coordination, and exchange
(Fligstein, 1996). Whether incumbents are privileged actors deriving substantive benefit and
ultimately power from the current social order (i.e., preexisting rules of interaction and resource
distribution within a market) or marginalized actors within the current social order who derive
substantially less benefit therefrom, incumbents oftentimes seek to perpetuate the established
institutional norms, values, rules, policies, regulations, etc. in pursuit of stability, which they
view as advancing the greater interests of all market actors (Fligstein, 2001).
However, market insurgents (e.g., startups), on the other hand, have a very different
perspective concerning the perpetuation of the existing social order within a given market which
they seek to infiltrate. By their very nature as competitive challengers, market insurgents
oftentimes seek to challenge and disrupt the mutually agreed upon norms, values, rules, policies,

75
regulations, etc. that market and nonmarket incumbents have collectively established over time
(Fligstein & McAdam, 2011). These challengers usually have a very different vision of how
market competition ought to be structured than their incumbent counterparts. This vision seeks to
challenge existent market rules, norms, policies, regulations, and structures and to transform
them in a manner which serves the self and collective interests of the nascent market entrant and
its allies (i.e., customers, employees, platform users, etc.). However, incumbents are most often
not willing to abide this new vision of their competitive market and as such mobilize their market
and/or political resources to erect barriers to the challenger’s market entry or ability to compete
within the market that they seek to disrupt.
To successfully confront and respond to this counterattack being waged by incumbents,
market insurgents do not typically possess the legitimacy and requisite human and political
resources in and of themselves (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012). Rather they need to identify allies
who they can partner with to pool their resources to advance their collective interests and new
vision for the given market. Effectively, they have to build coalitions with other field-level actors
in order to engage in collective action; however, as the literature has shown, facilitating
collective action is not an easy feat (Olson, 1965).
To successfully engage in collective action – as a means to counter market and
nonmarket incumbent attack – insurgents need to possess and employ social skill (Fligstein
2001; Jasper, 2004; Snow et al., 1986; Snow & Benford 1988). Within the domain of field
theory, social skill has to do with the unique ability – that institutional or organizational actors
possess – to convince other field-level actors to collectively mobilize with them in furtherance of
collective objectives. Or, in the words of Fligstein and McAdam (2012, p. 7) “social skill can be
defined as how individuals or collective actors possess a highly developed cognitive capacity for

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reading people and environments, framing lines of action, and mobilizing people in the service of
these action “frames.” These institutional entrepreneurs (in economic, social, and/or political
life) create a new vision of competition through the introduction of new products, services, and
business models (Fligstein, 2001). And as such, they use their nascent vision and resources to
induce cooperation amongst others through the creation of shared understandings – which may
be predicated on both logic and/or emotions – to facilitate collective political mobilization
(DiMaggio 1988).
Theorizing Transforming Political Markets. Combining the aforementioned insights
from the political markets literature (within corporate political strategy) and field theory (within
sociology), I introduce the notion of transforming political markets. Essentially, I assert that
within political markets experiencing transformation, the norms, rules, policies, and regulations
that have been established by both incumbent policy demanders and suppliers are challenged by
market insurgents (or startups) who seek to institute their new vision of change – for the given
market – in coalition with likeminded field actors. In response to this insurgent intrusion, market
and nonmarket incumbents utilize their power vis-a-vis policymakers and regulators to induce
the creation of legislation and/or regulation that will either preclude startups’ market entry or
significantly slow their competitive advance and performance thereafter. I further argue that
within this contentious climate, startups in-turn respond to this incumbent attack by building
coalitions with allies (e.g., customers, employees, platform users, etc.). Once coalitions are
formed, startups employ their market resources and capabilities to mobilize collective action (or
to politically mobilize their grassroots constituents) to pressure policymakers and regulators to
kill, change, or modify public policies and/or regulations that would negatively affect the
competitiveness of these startups. In the following section, I elaborate this notion of transforming

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political markets and the unique challenges that insurgent startups face when entering and
disturbing established markets and the interests of incumbents therein. I also hypothesize how
these environmental conditions in concert with certain firm-level capabilities increase the
likelihood of user lobbying amongst startups.

THEORETICAL MODEL AND HYPOTHESES

Entrepreneurial Startups and Nonmarket Strategy

Entrepreneurial firms (i.e., startups) add value to a given economy in numerous ways.
Through creating jobs for the local population, serving as suppliers, distributors, and retailers for
larger firms, and paying taxes (at the local, state, and federal levels), entrepreneurial ventures
contribute to and spur economic development within society (Reynolds, 1997). However,
although startups contribute substantively to a given economy (and are appreciated by many for
their contributions thereof), their presence is not always welcome by all actors therein.
Incumbent firms, for instance, can be particularly antagonistic towards startup companies insofar
as they (i.e., startups) can wittingly and unwittingly threaten the resources and market position of
incumbents through the introduction of new products, services, technologies, and/or business
models to the competitive marketplace (Aldrich & Baker, 2001; Lawrence, 1999). This scenario
creates uncertainty for both incumbents and startups alike. For incumbents, they experience
demand uncertainty inasmuch as the intrusion of the new market entrant has started to negatively
affect their share of the market (Ozcan & Gurses, 2019). Whilst for startups, they experience
response uncertainty insofar as they do not know if, when, or how incumbents will respond to
their incursion (e.g., through market or politically-based action) (Packard et al., 2017).

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In response to this perceived incursion, incumbents tend to take either market or
nonmarket-based action (Gurses & Ozcan, 2015). With respect to the former, incumbent firms
can invest in and ultimately create and/or proliferate new products, services, technologies, and/or
business models that rival or exceed that which was previously introduced to the market by
startups (Kim & Min, 2015). On the other hand, incumbents can leverage their political
connections and power vis-à-vis policy suppliers (i.e., policymakers, regulators, and bureaucrats)
to convince these government officials to protect their competitive interests from the intrusion of
new market entrants through erection of laws and regulations (Edelman & Suchman, 1997;
Russo, 2001). And, as the extant literature has shown, in reaction to incumbent political attack
(following their market entry), startups can leverage their market-based capabilities (e.g., B2C
and platform capabilities) as political capabilities in mobilizing their customers and platform
users to protect and forward their policy/regulatory interests (Baron, 2018; Jia & Mayer, 2016;
Murphy, Walker, & Jia, 2022; Murphy & Walker, 2022; Ozcan & Gurses, 2018; Uzunca et al.,
2018).
But not all entrepreneurial startups decide to utilize this political tactic (i.e., user
lobbying). And some startups employ it more than others. Hence, an important question is, why?
In the remainder of this section, I theorize the antecedents of user lobbying (i.e., tech mediated
constituency building) and introduce hypotheses thereof. In short, I assert that the political
marketplace is attractive for startups to employ user lobbying when they disrupt their respective
market in a substantive manner, introduce a new and controversial business model to the market,
and when they possess specific market capabilities (i.e., B2C and platform capabilities) that lend
themselves to politically mobilizing individual constituents (e.g., customers and platform users)
in mass.

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Environmental Factors, Regulatory Uncertainty, and User Lobbying

Disruptiveness and User Lobbying. In addition to creating value for society (in general),
startups also add value directly to larger incumbent firms by supplying them with the tangible or
intangible inputs they need to create their products and/or services, selling their products directly
to consumers through their retail shops, by transporting/delivering their products directly to
consumers, and by transferring innovations (Dushnitsky & Lenox, 2005; Van Praag & Versloot,
2007). This symbiotic relationship creates mutual benefit for large incumbents and nascent
entrepreneurial ventures alike, thereby precluding direct competition and the potential negative
externalities thereof that could result from the likes of a price war (Lee, 2007; Porter, 1980).
However, not all startups are interested in cultivating an interdependent relationship with
incumbents. Rather, some new ventures believe that engaging in cooperative competition with
incumbents could potentially place them at a competitive disadvantage (Markman & Waldron,
2014). From their perspective, leveraging the elements of disruptiveness and newness would be a
more prudent path forward, which would ultimately allow these nascent firms to cultivate a
sustainable competitive advantage over time.
As scholars explain, startups that are disruptive in nature either create and diffuse
emerging technologies to craft nascent and/or niche markets, or they enhance current
technologies in substantive ways such that they significantly alter the competitive landscape
(Adner, 2002; Christensen & Raynor, 2003). These firms and their technologies range from
incremental to radical disruptiveness, including startups with mid-range innovations (Abernathy
& Clark, 1988). Hence, as the literature asserts, there are four types of disruptive technologies
that firms may introduce to the market; that is, radical, architectural, modular, and incremental

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(Abernathy & Clark, 1988; Carayannopoulos, 2009; Henderson & Clark, 1990; Tushman &
Anderson, 1986).
Startups with disruptive technologies achieve superior functional performance (as
opposed to cost-based performance) over incumbent’s existing products, and as such,
significantly modify the price-performance frontier (Abernathy & Utterback, 1988; Anderson &
Tushman, 1990; Christensen, 1997). However, when initially entering the market, these firms
typically do so within peripheral markets given the underdeveloped nature of their nascent
(potentially disruptive) technology; nevertheless, as the technology improves (within the
peripheral market), these startups eventually deploy their upgraded technology at the lower-
end/segment of mainstream markets, moving steadily upmarket as performance continues to
improve (Adner, 2002).
As the aforementioned process unfolds, disruptive startups oftentimes have to address
issues related to what the literature refers to as liability of newness (Stinchcombe, 1965). That is,
the challenges related to being a new (and unknown) market entrant. For instance, startups with
disruptive technologies have to demonstrate how their product and/or service adds value to
consumers beyond that which is offered by incumbents through their current technology. This
can be challenging insofar as consumers are familiar with (and perhaps committed to) the current
technology and could potentially incur what they perceive to be substantial switching costs.
Consumers may also not fully comprehend the new technology/product/service that is being
introduced by the new market entrant. And the brand equity and image that incumbent firms
have been able to achieve within the market may have helped them to attain a certain degree of
brand loyalty amongst their customers (Lam et al., 2010). In short, disruptive startups have to

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eventually overcome the lack of perceived legitimacy from consumers and incumbents in the
market (Hannan & Freeman, 1976; Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Suchman, 1995).
Although startups with disruptive technologies face competitive disadvantages, they can
actually leverage these perceived disadvantages as competitive advantages. Essentially, this is
often achieved through the process by which they enter the lower-tier of the market, diffuse their
technology, enhance/further develop their technology, steadily move upmarket, disrupt the
market, and ultimately steal market share from incumbents. As Carayannopoulos (2009) details,
two particular competitive disadvantages that disruptive startups can leverage to achieve
competitive advantage are related to their age and size.
With respect to the former, albeit age can serve as a competitive disadvantage for
disruptive startups – inasmuch as these nascent firms lack organizational legitimacy with
stakeholders on account of their inexperience in the market, the lack of information on their
organizational performance, and the ambiguity surrounding the value inherent in their novel
technology – these firms can also profit therefrom. As a nascent little-known firm, one can
initially enter the market, diffuse one’s new technology, and develop it without necessarily
precipitating a competitive response from incumbents insofar as the lack of knowledge of the
firm hinders incumbents’ ability to make interfirm comparisons, thereby potentially reducing the
extent to which the venture and its technology are viewed as a threat (Carayannopoulos, 2009;
Chen & Hambrick, 1995; Porac et al., 1995).
Similarly to that of age, being of relatively small size can be a competitive boon to
startups with disruptive technologies. When first entering a market, disruptive new ventures are
typically smaller than their established counterparts. As such, they can go unnoticed by
incumbents, they can be seen by incumbents’ strategists as non-threating, their smaller stature

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can be interpreted by incumbents as a lack of success, and not being a part of the strategic group
of incumbents can divert their attention away from the actions (and competitive advancement) of
the startup and its technology (Carayannopoulos, 2009; Baum & Korn, 1999; Porac et al., 1995).
In essence, the disruptive new venture can buy itself much needed time. By initially operating
under the radar of incumbents, the startup can develop and diffuse its technology without being
concerned about competitive retaliation initially. This competitive head start can provide the
nascent firm with sufficient lead time to demonstrate the value of its technology to consumers
significantly increasing its diffusion and the market share of the startup.
When a disruptive startup reaches this growth stage on account of the diffusion of its
emergent technology and begins to threaten the market share of established firms, incumbents
and the startup itself both experience uncertainty. As a result of having a substantial part of their
market share eroded by a disruptive startup, incumbent firms experience uncertainty with respect
to the demand for their products and/or services (Ozcan & Gurses, 2019). This reduction in
demand, which seemingly came out of nowhere from the perspective of incumbents, usually
causes great consternation on their part insofar as this turn of events (a while in the making) has
caught them off guard, negatively impacted consumer demand for their product and/or service,
and reduced their profit margins. And with regards to the disruptive venture, not knowing if,
when, or how incumbents will respond to their appropriation of market share (i.e., through
market or politically-based action) (Packard et al., 2017), initially creates response uncertainty
amongst startups until the competitive response of incumbents becomes clear and the startup
devises its own counter-response to protect its market ascension.
In reaction to the perceived incursion of the disruptor, incumbents tend to take either
market or nonmarket-based action (Gurses & Ozcan, 2015). With respect to the former,

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incumbent firms can invest in and ultimately create and/or proliferate new products, services,
and/or technologies that rival or exceed that which was previously introduced to the market by
startups (Kim & Min, 2015). The challenge with this competitive response is that it can take
quite a deal of time for incumbents to invest in, develop, and bring nascent/disruptive products
and/or technologies to market (Bower & Christensen, 1995). For as Bower & Christensen (1995)
explain, to bring a disruptive technology to market an incumbent has to (1) determine whether
the technology is truly disruptive or sustaining, (2) define the strategic significance of the
disruptive technology, (3) locate the initial market for the disruptive technology, and (4) house
the disruptive technology in an independent entity outside of the usual parameters of the firm –
all of which are time consuming activities. Additionally, once developing a disruptive
technology, incumbent firms will have to overcome the varying forms and manifestations of
organizational inertia seeking to divert resources from developing and diffusing the disruptive
technology back to reinvesting in the products and/or services that helped the incumbent attain
success (i.e., substantive market share) in the first place. Again, this entire process of developing
a proper market response to the intrusion of a given startup disruptor is extremely time
consuming and challenging for incumbents.
Hence, incumbents (as policy demanders) are typically more inclined (in the short-term)
to respond to disruptive startups through political means (Baron, 2018). Essentially, by
leveraging their political connections and power vis-à-vis policy suppliers (i.e., policy makers,
regulators, and bureaucrats) – as a result of their ability to meet the informational, financial, and
political needs of policy suppliers – incumbents (who are typically politically capable and
connected) oftentimes use their political resources and power to convince these elected officials
and/or regulators to protect their (i.e., incumbents’) competitive interests from the intrusion of

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new market entrants (Edelman & Suchman, 1997; Russo, 2001). This political reaction by
incumbents creates regulatory uncertainty for the disruptive startup insofar as this firm has no
idea as to whether policy suppliers are going to side with incumbents and take policy or
regulatory action that would inhibit the growth, profitability, or overall competitive performance
of the disruptor (Ozcan & Gurses, 2018). Thus, to counter this political attack being waged by
incumbents and their political allies amongst policy suppliers, the disruptive startup will leverage
its popularity amongst its customers and/or platform users (as it relates to its superior
technology, product, and/or service in the market) to politically mobilize these constituents
against the creation of public or regulatory policy that would have a significant negative affect
on the disruptor or the extent to which it is able to meet its customers’/users’ needs (through
bringing its superior technology, product, and/or service to market). With this logic in mind, I
assert the following:
Hypothesis 1: Disruptive high-growth startups are more likely to engage in user lobbying
than high-growth startups that are not disruptive.

Gigness and User Lobbying. In addition to disruptiveness, another important factor that
helps to create regulatory uncertainty for new ventures is when they (i.e., startups) introduce a
new and controversial business model to both their market and strategic action field, thereby
subverting the interests of market and nonmarket incumbents alike. One of the best
contemporary examples of the introduction of this type of nascent/controversial business model
innovation is that of the sharing economy.
Sharing economy firms are startups “that commonly use information technology to
connect different stakeholders—individuals, companies, governments, and other—to share or
access different products and services… (through) enabling collaborative consumption”

85
(Laamanen et al., p. 213, 2018). Iconic ventures like Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, DoorDash, Instacart,
and Postmates exemplify the sharing economy. They use platform technology in concert with
independent contracting to allow their users on the supply side to monetize their property (e.g.,
car, scooter, house, apartment, kitchen, etc.) through utilizing it to provide services to users on
the demand side typically via app. In so doing, sharing economy firms oftentimes add superior
value to supply and demand side platform users in terms of flexibility, quality, efficiency, and
affordability.
In essence, these startups have introduced a radical shift in how firms are organized and
how they bring their services to the market (Davis, 2016). Sharing economy firms have ushered
in a new era of network-based value creation, wherein a greater diversity of interrelationships are
possible when compared to traditional business models, and where opportunities for co-
investment, co-learning, and co-innovation are far more prevalent (Laamanen et al., 2018). In
actuality, these firms view themselves as the vanguard of a social movement, which seeks to
advance technology as a means to share underutilized assets, empower middle class workers
(through independent contracting), reduce ecological degradation, and foster a sense of
connection and community through collaborative consumption (Botsman & Rogers, 2010;
Cheng, 2016; Schor & Fitzmaurice, 2015; Soule, 2012). Like previous social movements, the
sharing economy has upset the status quo in its strategic action field, thereby instigating
contestation from market and nonmarket incumbents. Many of their detractors have continued to
opine that sharing economy startups also impose negative externalities on those within and
without their respective market.
Sharing economy firms face even greater contention in their SAF than typical disruptive
startups insofar as their business model – which places people who are in need of a given service

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in direct contact with people who perform that service – has successfully drawn the ire not just of
market incumbents and incumbent-captured regulators, but also other policy demanders within
the field, such as: labor unions, ideologically motivated SMOs, activists, etc. These nonmarket
incumbents charge that the sharing economy contributes to precarious working conditions,
distorts competition, facilitates tax evasion, and increases social inequality (e.g., Ahsan, 2020;
Fernández-Macías, 2018; Peticca-Harris et al., 2018; Schor, 2017; Schor & Atwood-Charles,
2017).
One of the major challenges with the sharing economy has been that this nascent business
model is so novel that it has literally caught established regulatory institutions/mechanisms
(which have been collectively agreed upon and erected by market and nonmarket incumbents) by
surprise, and in so doing, rendered them virtually ineffective (e.g., Martin et al., 2017; Howcroft
& Bergvall-Kåreborn, 2018). Beyond merely catching regulatory institutions and mechanisms
off guard, nonmarket opponents also complain that startups in the sharing economy oftentimes
purposefully (i.e., strategically) circumvent or flat out ignore existing regulatory policy when
first entering the market. Firms like Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb have become notorious for hurriedly
entering a given market without regulatory approval and diffusing their superior
technology/service throughout the market (Baron, 2018; Kirchner & Schüßler, 2019).
Essentially, this type of clandestine market entry and diffusion enhances sharing economy
startups’ potential competitiveness by allowing them to immediately and unexpectedly enter the
market, thereby preventing delays associated with the regulatory process in general and the
regulatory process of new business models/services in particular. However, opponents opine that
entering before regulators can comprehend their business model and provide commonsense
regulations that protect the interests of consumers, workers, and other stakeholders within the

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SAF – that are impacted by the operations of sharing economy firms – is reckless at best and
dangerous at worst (Ahsan, 2020; Borkholder et al., 2018).
A second issue that causes consternation amongst nonmarket antagonists to sharing
economy firms, is the fact that their supply side users (i.e., workers) are not classified as
employees, but as independent contractors. Opponents within the SAF (e.g., labor unions, labor
advocates, SMOs, activists, etc.) complain that such a classification legally precludes sharing
economy workers from the normal protections that are enjoined in the typical employee-
employer relationship that are enshrined under labor law, such as: eligibility for overtime pay,
mandatory time-off for vacations, unemployment compensation, and workers compensation
(Baron, 2018). Despite the benefits that the sharing economy has introduced, incumbents within
the SAF argue that it has introduced regressive practices as it pertains to the rights of labor.
Of all of the incumbents antagonistic towards the sharing economy, labor unions are
particularly averse to independent contracting therein, not simply because of the negative
potential implications for workers, but also for more self-interested reasons. Essentially,
independent contractors are non-unionized and as such do not pay union dues; whereas full-time
employees (who comprise labor union membership) can be unionized. As non-unionized
independent contractors, from the perspective of labor unions, sharing economy workers
implicitly contribute to the further weakening of unions by diminishing union membership.
Hence, labor unions (like incumbent firms) have a competitive incentive to either put sharing
economy firms out of business or pressure regulators to impose substantive regulatory measures
upon them.
In addition to ignoring and/or circumventing existing regulation and increasing the
prevalence of independent contracting, a third major issue that nonmarket incumbents have with

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sharing economy startups is that of customer safety and security. From this perspective, firms in
the sharing economy have not done enough to protect customers when they consume ride-
hailing, home-sharing, shared-food delivery, or other sharing economy related services. As such,
safety advocates assert that independent contractors using their property (e.g., car, scooter,
house, apartment, kitchen, etc.) to deliver a service to customers on behalf of sharing economy
firms, ought to be required to have background checks, to be fingerprinted, to possess a
commercial license, and to have their property (e.g., car, scooter, house, kitchen, etc.) inspected
on a regular basis (Baron, 2018). Although these measures would significantly increase burdens
upon sharing economy startups and substantively increase their costs, safety advocates and
activists argue that doing so is a necessity to protect consumer welfare (Borkholder et al., 2018).
In sum, sharing economy startups have introduced a new business model to the market,
which has caught both market and nonmarket incumbents (such as: policy makers, regulators,
labor unions, SMOs, and activists) off guard (Toivola, 2018). In so doing, these startups have
created demand uncertainty for incumbent firms and regulatory uncertainty for nonmarket
incumbents insofar as they (i.e., sharing economy startups) have – in the eyes on nonmarket
incumbents – continued to evade and/or ignore existing regulation, diminish union membership
and workers’ rights, and refuse to take consumer safety more seriously. From this perspective,
circumventing current regulation has lead to substantive uncertainty and consternation for
nonmarket incumbents and stakeholders regarding the three aforementioned issues insofar as
these nonmarket incumbents have worked with incumbent firms to help co-construct mutually
agreed upon norms, policies, and regulations that have helped to create stability within the given
field, which they feel is being subverted and undermined by nascent market insurgents (i.e.,
Uzunca et al., 2018).

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Ultimately, nonmarket incumbents and stakeholders respond to this threat (i.e., the
creation of regulatory uncertainty through evading existent regulations) by trying to slow the
entry and diffusion of sharing economy firms and their services through erecting new regulatory
barriers/protections (Ozcan & Gurses, 2019). Incumbent regulators and policymakers, similarly
to firm incumbents, are incentivized as policy suppliers to enact regulations upon the sharing
economy that will protect workers, customers, and other stakeholders within the SAF that could
be negatively impacted from the externalities emanating from the operations of these nascent
firms. Other nonmarket incumbents (e.g., labor unions, labor advocates, SMOs, activists, etc.) as
policy demanders will operationalize their opposition towards sharing economy startups by
lobbying policymakers and regulators to erect policies and regulations that will make these firms
more accountable for protecting the rights of workers, customers, and other SAF stakeholders
irrespective of the potential deleterious effect on the performance of startups in the sharing
economy.
Within this contentious political environment, sharing economy startups also experience
regulatory uncertainty inasmuch as the policy and regulatory outcomes emanating from the
lobbying of policy suppliers (i.e., policymakers and regulators) – within the SAF by nonmarket
incumbents – have yet to take shape (Ozcan & Gurses, 2019). Hence, in this hostile climate,
startups in the sharing economy – especially those that are high-growth – are inclined to behave
like a social movement by mobilizing their robust and dedicated user base to articulate the
interests of supply and demand side participants in the sharing economy directly to policymakers
and regulators in the market. This grassroots response counters that of nonmarket incumbents in
the opposition and oftentimes insulates sharing economy firms from harm insofar as customers

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and users are also constituents who influence the re-election and permanence of policymakers
and regulators (Cox, 2019). Hence, I assert that:
Hypothesis 2: High-growth startups with a sharing economy business model are more
likely to employ user lobbying than high-growth startups that do not possess a sharing
economy business model.

Leveraging Market Capabilities for User Lobbying

The second category of user lobbying antecedents theorized in this work is that of firm
market capabilities. The extant literature from the resource-based view of the firm has defined
market resources and capabilities as the tangible and intangible assets and abilities that a firm
possesses, which when employed, allow the firm to achieve sustainable competitive advantage
(relative to its competitors) and substantive levels of profitability (Barney, 1986; Barney, 1991;
Rumelt, 1984; Wernerfelt, 1984). To achieve sustainable competitive advantage in the
marketplace, firms need to develop resources and capabilities that are valuable, rare, inimitable,
and non-substitutable (Barney, 1991; Peteraf, 1993). Firms able to develop idiosyncratic
capabilities that customers value, and are difficult to replicate, will outperform their competitors.
These foundational claims from RBV have been utilized by CPS scholars to both
investigate firms’ political capabilities in general and explain why some firms are better
equipped to influence political outcomes relative to others (Holburn & Zelner, 2010; Lawton et
al., 2013; Oliver & Holzinger, 2008). Essentially, this research has demonstrated that some firms
possess the requisite resources and capabilities necessary for engaging successfully in certain
types of political activity, which gives them a competitive advantage in pursuing their political
goals relative to their less resource rich counterparts (Fremeth & Shaver, 2014; Holburn &
Zelner, 2010; Jia & Mayer, 2016).

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As the political capabilities literature has advanced, scholars have begun to comprehend
the need for firms to possess not just strong market capabilities, but also robust political
capabilities in order to enhance performance (Li et al., 2013). Despite this need, there has been a
dearth of work investigating the linkages between market and political capabilities (Jia & Mayer,
2016). Of the research that has been done on the connections between market and political
capabilities, some scholars have asserted that a substitutive relationship exists between market
and political capabilities (Lenway et al., 1996; Morck et al., 2001), others have argued that firms
are able to leverage prior CPAs in the development of future CPAs (e.g., Garcia-Canal &
Guillen, 2008; Henisz & Zelner, 2012, etc.), and most recently researchers have affirmed that
firms’ market capabilities directly impact the development of political capabilities and how
effectively they are utilized (Jia & Mayer, 2016).
I adopt this latter perspective. That is, in building upon the work of Jia and Mayer (2016),
I argue that high-growth tech startups leverage their market capabilities as political capabilities
in order to politically mobilize their customers and platform users in advancing their competitive
priorities. Specifically, I assert that high-performing startups are able to transform their B2C and
platform capabilities – which help them compete effectively in the marketplace – into political
capabilities by using their expertise in consumer psychology and platform-user brokerage to
implement user lobbying campaigns. And in effectively implementing these campaigns they are
able to convince allied policy demanders (i.e., their customers and platform users) to pressure
policy suppliers (i.e., public policymakers and regulators) to slow, block, modify, or kill policies
or regulations that are incongruent with the competitive interests of these startups. In sum, B2C
and platform capabilities allow high-growth startups to develop and employ the social skill
necessary to convince and facilitate the political mobilization of their allies/constituents through

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collective action (i.e., user lobbying) (Fligstein 2001; Fligstein & McAdam, 2011, 2012; Jasper
2004; Snow et al., 1986; Snow & Benford 1988).
B2C Firms and User Lobbying. Capabilities consistent with the type of customer that a
firm targets and serves has implications for the extent to which a given startup engages in user
lobbying. The marketing literature typically bifurcates firms into those that are designed to bring
to market products and/or services that cater to the needs of individual consumers (i.e., business-
to-consumer or B2C firms) and firms that cater to the product and/or service needs of other
companies (i.e., business-to-business or B2B firms). Marketing scholars have opined that the
capabilities associated with catering to the needs and wants of individual consumers can be
different than the capabilities associated with catering to the needs and wants of business
consumers (Morgan & Slotegraaf, 2012). It is imperative for B2C firms, for instance, to have a
robust understanding of the drivers of consumption for individual consumers and the
psychological mechanisms related to individual persuasion. B2B firms, on the other hand, need
to comprehend the political dynamics that are at play within a given firm – between major
stakeholder constituencies – and the ramifications of these political undercurrents on purchase
decisions regarding products and/or services necessary for the functioning of these business
consumers. In sum, firm differences in the type of customers they serve (i.e., individual
consumers versus business consumers) and the capabilities necessary to add value to these
divergent customers, influence the extent to which firms will initiate user lobbying activities.
When honing-in on the capabilities essential to implementing user lobbying campaigns,
the research on constituency building provides important insights. In general, this literature
argues that to successfully mobilize constituents firms have to understand which constituents
would be most likely to agree with their policy stance and mobilize on their behalf, which

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constituents firms would have to educate about their policy stance and convince to mobilize in
support of their policy interests, and which constituents would know how to convey their policy
stance directly to public and regulatory policymakers in the most effective manner (without
assistance from firms), as well as which constituents would need support in that regard (Keim,
1981).
To be more specific, as Haley (1996), Miller and Sinclair (2009), and Sinclair and Irani
(2005) demonstrate, firms that are successful at politically mobilizing their grassroots
constituents, first, possess the capability of persuading individuals in-mass. Second, they have an
acute understanding of the psychological mechanisms and motivations behind individual
decision-making. That is, they understand constituents’ needs, wants, motivations, sociopolitical
views, political ideology, as well as the views that they hold on issues relevant to the interests of
the firm (Lord, 2003). Third, once firms have identified the constituents who are already aligned
with their policy interests, those who are not yet aligned with their policy interests but who can
potentially be cajoled in that direction, and those who will most likely not align thereof, they
then determine the best way to proceed. That is, they decide the most effective and efficient way
to mobilize the first group, they weigh the costs and benefits related to attempting to convince
and mobilize the second group, and they examine whether it is within the realm of possibility of
converting some individuals from the third group of constituents. Firms also decide, at this stage,
whether they should encourage or facilitate constituents to engage in individual or collective
grassroots mobilization efforts (Keim, 1981). In essence, the process of persuasion (within
constituency building as a political strategy) requires firms to develop, possess, and exercise
their issue framing capabilities as part of the overall process (Snow et al., 1986).

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Taking into consideration what the constituency building literature has elucidated
concerning the firm-level capabilities essential to successfully instituting constituency building
campaigns, it is evident that the capabilities inherent in B2C firms are particularly suited for
effective user lobbying when compared to that of B2B firms (Jia & Mayer, 2016). First, user
lobbying by its very definition is a tech-mediated form of constituency building that explicitly
focuses on the corporate political mobilization of customers and platform users. Hence, B2C
capabilities are directly relevant and applicable to this specific type of constituency building
tactic. For instance, B2C firms have a direct link with the individual consumers of their products
and/or services. That is, to facilitate the purchasing of their products by individual consumers,
B2C firms possess an intimate understanding of consumers’ needs, wants, inclinations, and
motivations. B2C firms typically have or gain access to these forms of data through their
consumer information system or through third party providers of such important information.
These firms are also able to explain to consumers what their product/service is, how it will add
value to them, and how the firm will continue to add value subsequent to their purchase of the
product/service. Firms that are successful in this regard – by adding surplus value to consumers
relative to competitors pre, during, and post-sale – are able to develop a close and trusting
relationship with their customers to the extent that they will demonstrate loyalty to the brand
(Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001; Culpepper & Thelan, 2019; Johnson, Brittney, Bauer, & Carlson,
2021). Furthermore, with a deep understanding of the psychology of consumer purchasing
decisions, the ability to persuade consumers to buy one’s product/service, the capacity to
continuously add surplus value to consumers pre, during, and post-sale, in concert with the
establishment of trusting relations, successful B2C startups are able to leverage these unique
market capabilities to mobilize their customers and users on public and regulatory policy issues

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affecting the competitiveness of the firm. In summary, B2C startups will be more inclined to
politically mobilize their users, because they possess the social skill necessary to advance this
form of collective action (Fligstein 2001; Fligstein & McAdam, 2011, 2012; Jasper 2004, 2006;
Snow et al., 1986; Snow & Benford 1988).
Hypothesis 3: High-growth B2C startups are more likely to employ user lobbying than
high-growth B2B startups.

Platform-Based Firms and User Lobbying. In addition to identifying, educating, and
convincing potentially mobilizable constituents (through issue framing) of the need to politically
mobilize in favor of a given policy issue affecting the firm – as part of the constituency building
process – user lobbyers also have to help facilitate communication between the mobilizing
stakeholders and the targeted public/regulatory policymaker(s) (Baysinger et al., 1985). Said
differently, user lobbying startups need to aid mobilizing customers and users in effectively and
efficiently communicating their public and regulatory policy demands to policy suppliers (i.e.,
policymakers and regulators). As I will argue, platform-based startups are particularly suited and
uniquely positioned to broker this form of political communication, exchange, and influence
given their networked business model (Murphy & Walker, 2022). I explicate and substantiate
this line of reasoning below.
With the proliferation of ICTs over the decades, there has been a precipitous shift
amongst firms towards a more networked form of business organization. That is, firms are
increasingly ignoring established boundaries and engaging in hybrid forms of collaboration that
are distinct both from the traditional mode of arms’ length market contracting and that of vertical
integration (Powell, 1990). This new hybrid organizational form (referred to as networks in the
literature) comprises a collective of actors who lack a legitimate organizational authority to

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resolve disputes, but who, nevertheless, build enduring market relations through engaging in
repeated economic exchange (Podolny & Page, 1998, Powell, 1990). Family businesses, guilds,
cartels, extended trading companies, etc. are historic examples of this type of hybrid
organizational form (Agnew, 1986); however, the emergence of ICTs have helped to introduce a
new type of hybrid organization that has rapidly diffused across markets. That is, the platform-
based firm. Many of the world’s most high performing companies and fast-growing startups are
firms that have adopted this platform-based business model – in whole or in part – because of the
value-added opportunities that it offers the firm, its customers, and platform users in general.
The platform-based firm (or platform firm) is predicated on a business model that
facilitates economic exchanges between two or more interdependent entities (e.g., buyers, sellers,
complementors, etc.), and in so doing, creates economic value for all parties involved in these
market exchanges (Afuah, 2018; Cusumano et al., 2019; Evans & Schmalensee, 2016; Massa et
al., 2017). As McIntyre et al. (2020, p. 8) elaborate “A platform business model is a set of
activities for building resources and using them to generate, deliver, and monetize the benefits
that users perceive in the platform—that is, the set of activities for creating and capturing value
on the platform.” Social media platforms like Facebook connect demand side users to friends,
colleagues, advertisers, and information; ecommerce platforms like Amazon connect buyers and
sellers of goods; and high-growth startups in the sharing economy space like Airbnb, Doordash,
and Uber, use their platforms to connect service seekers with providers (Culpepper & Thelan,
2019). In enabling these types of exchange, platform-based firms develop and exploit an
elaborate network of demand and supply-side users and related resources, which network
members can access on demand in meeting their demand or supply-side needs (Zhu & Iansiti,
2012).

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Be it the fact that the platform business model seeks to connect buyers and sellers of
products and/or services and broker the exchange relations formed thereof, platform firms
measure their performance by both the number of users they are able to attain and maintain and
the value that users believe they derive from the platform ecosystem (Rochet & Tirole, 2003,
2006). Hence, these market intermediaries or brokers devote a substantial amount of their
attention and firmographic resources towards acquiring and retaining a robust user base. This
excess value (or end-user-surplus) is created for platform users through the given platform’s
ability to employ unique strategies that allow it to successfully attract two or more distinct user
groups to the platform at reasonable cost, whilst being able to reap respectable profit margins
therefrom (McIntyre et al., 2020). In general, platforms achieve this feat by eliminating
blockages for buyers and sellers that impede market exchange (and facilitating their economic
interaction thereof), as well as by enabling the realization of market efficiencies in terms of
enhanced resource allocation, transaction volume, and congruence between supply and demand
(Hagiu, 2005; Thomas et al., 2014). More specifically, when seeking to deliver end-user-surplus,
enterprising platforms have to pay close attention to price allocation between the demand and
supply sides of the platform with respect to “a) platform governance (i.e., whether the platform
will charge the consumer or good/service provider), b) end users’ cost of multihoming (i.e., the
charges, or lack thereof, associated with connecting to/engaging with several platforms), c)
platform differentiation, d) platforms’ ability to use volume-based pricing, e) the presence of
same-side externalities, and f) platform compatibility” (Rochet & Tirole, 2003, p. 993).
Beyond the importance of adding value to users (in general) and price allocation between
the demand and supply sides of a given platform, to generate end-user-surplus, the literature has
also given much attention to the significance of the direct and indirect network effects of

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platforms. Direct network effects have to do with the size of the network of a given platform.
The larger the network of users, the greater the amount of value users can derive from the
platform. As research has shown, platform users respond positively to scale advantages (Arthur,
1989; Katz & Shapiro, 1985). Essentially, this is a mutually reinforcing process. That is, as a
platform is able to scale-up its user-base, third party intermediaries become ever-more willing to
offer their complimentary goods and/or services to users via the platform. This ultimately
enhances value for both demand and supply-side users, thereby increasing direct network effects
(Gawer & Cusumano, 2002; Cusumano et al., 2019). Indirect network effects, on the other hand,
are related to the surplus value that users on one side of the platform (i.e., demand or supply)
create for users on the other side (Armstrong, 2006; Cennamo & Santaló, 2013). In this instance,
positive indirect network effects are created.
When contemplating the potential effect of platform capabilities on the user lobbying
campaigns of high-growth startups, it becomes evident that a positive relationship ought to exist
thereof. In substantiating this argument, I draw upon the emerging user lobbying literature within
political science. Scholars in this emergent space have begun to theorize the market-based
advantages that platforms are able to take advantage of in order to develop the political
capability necessary to mobilize their grassroots constituents in the marketplace (i.e., demand
and supply-side users). In brief, Culpepper and Thelan (2019) assert that successful platform-
based firms are able to achieve competitive advantage in economic scale and in the surplus value
they create for customers and supply-side users (relative to their non-platform competitors), such
that users on both sides of the platform are not willing to forgo this value and abide the notion of
living without the platform on account of public or regulatory policy antagonistic towards the
existence or predominance of the platform. In the remainder of this section, I expound upon the

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work of Culpepper and Thelan (2019) in explicating how platform capabilities increase the
propensity of firms to user lobby. Like them, I affirm that platform companies are able to
leverage their economic scale and user surplus/popularity; however, I also argue that they are
able to take advantage of their cost advantages – resulting from their platform technology –
allowing them to politically mobilize their constituents (i.e., users) at a lower-cost relative to
their non-platform counterparts.
Platform-based firms possess the technology and know-how to connect demand and
supply-side users in the marketplace. They can leverage this market-related technology and
know-how to mobilize and connect public and regulatory policy demanders (i.e., users) and
suppliers (i.e., policymakers and regulators) in the political marketplace. Given their uncanny
ability to broker market exchanges between service/product seekers and providers, platforms can
employ this skill-set (i.e., social skill) to organize users as a cohesive public sentiment pool and
coordinate their grassroots political mobilization efforts (Fligstein 2001; Fligstein & McAdam,
2011, 2012; Jasper 2004; Snow et al., 1986; Snow & Benford 1988). They can also draw upon
their ability to match demand and supply-side users through their artificial intelligence (AI) to
easily and efficiently match their users with relevant policymakers and regulators – for the given
public/regulatory issue at hand – to advocate for the firm’s policy preferences (Fogg, 2008,
2009).
Successful platforms are oftentimes seen by their customers as providing a substantially
superior service relevant to their non-platform competitors. The sophisticated nature of their
service offering (on account of their technology/AI) oftentimes is so superior in the eyes of
consumers that they could not imagine returning to a life without this service, because of the
sheer convenience that the platform provides. Whilst on the supply-side, platforms make it

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possible for enhanced market activity by entrepreneurs and third-party vendors by giving them
unfettered access to a network of potential consumers either at a reasonable or at no cost. Hence,
given the superior service and the surplus value that platform firms create for demand and supply
side users relative to their non-platform competitors (as a result of their technology), platforms
are able to easily convince a large swath of their user base to contact their elected representatives
– and unelected bureaucrats – in their city, county, or state to advocate for the given platform’s
policy and/or regulatory agenda.
In addition to their sophisticated matching abilities through AI and their closeness to their
customers and supply-side users, successful platforms are able to leverage their competitive
advantage in network scale (i.e., size of their user-base) (Kurz, 2017). Given the substantial size
of their network, successful platform-based firms are able to politically mobilize an army (i.e.,
substantive network) of users at a relatively low-cost when compared to their non-platform
counterparts. This ability to take advantage of economies of scale and network effects, gives
platform firms a unique competitive advantage within the market that they can leverage to
develop political capabilities and achieve their policy objectives. Specifically, they can employ
this capability to engage in user lobbying campaigns at minimal cost.
In sum, unlike other tech firms, platform-based firms possess large customer/user
networks, as well as a deep understanding of customer/user needs, because of their ability to
access data on the psychology/preferences of their users through AI and machine learning. This
unique capability gives platform-based firms a high degree of social skill (Fligstein 2001;
Fligstein & McAdam, 2011, 2012; Jasper 2004; Snow et al., 1986; Snow & Benford 1988)
allowing them to politically influence individual customers/users in mass through their
persuasive technologies (Fogg, 2008, 2009). With their sophisticated network technology and

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networked business model, platform-based tech firms are also able to seamlessly place users in
contact with third party entities, whether they be other users, firms, social movement
organizations/actors, non-profit entities, or policy suppliers (i.e., public and regulatory policy
makers). Hence, there is reason to surmise that of all tech firms, platform-based tech firms
possess the strategic resources and capabilities essential to politically mobilizing their
customers/users in mass, whilst simultaneously facilitating their direct communication with
public and regulatory policy makers (with whom they can articulate their policy grievances or
preferences). As Applico CEO Alex Moazed aptly put it, “platform businesses … do not own the
means of production—instead, they create the means of connection” (Hoyles, 2021).
Hypothesis 4: High-growth platform-based startups are more likely to engage in user
lobbying than high-growth non-platform-based startups.

METHODOLOGY

Sample

My empirical context is unicorn companies headquartered in the United States (US),
which yields a sample of approximately 300 firms. Unicorns are high-growth tech startups that
have a valuation of $1 billion or more, but have yet to go through the initial public offering (IPO)
process to become publicly traded firms (i.e., corporations). I procured the list of unicorns from
the Crunchbase database. Essentially, I have chosen this particular unicorn sample for several
reasons. First, the diffusion of user lobbying began in the US with the first net neutrality battle
which lasted from 2011 to 2012, where tech firms of all sizes engaged in collective grassroots
mobilization to kill two bills – which sought to substantially curve internet freedoms – emanating
from the US House of Representatives and Senate, respectively. Second, user lobbying has been
most prevalent within the US (although there are instances of this political tactic being used in

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European Union countries and India). Third, US unicorns have been far more inclined, than
unicorns from other countries, to employ user lobbying within the US. Finally, as DeSantola and
Gulati (2017) argue in their important review investigating the literature on growth in
entrepreneurial ventures, it is important for scholars not to merely study brand new startups that
have been operating in the market from 1-5 years (which has been a scholarly trend as of late),
but to also examine these firms over the course of their growth prior to IPO. We know relatively
little about how these high-growth startups attain and maintain their growth and performance
despite the odds (DeSantola & Gulati, 2017). Thus, studying unicorns (i.e., high-growth tech
startups) helps to answer this scholarly call.
My focal period for data collection covers 10 years from 2010 to 2019. I opt for this
period because the build-up to what eventually became the mass diffusion of user lobbying (i.e.,
the first net neutrality battle) began during this period, culminating in the first major online
protest by tech firms, which took place on January 18, 2012. On this date, over 100,000 tech
firms including Google, Craigslist, Wikipedia, and Reddit utilized their websites, online
platforms, blogs, online petitions, etc. to politically mobilize their customers and users in order to
kill the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House of Representatives and the Protect IP Act in the
Senate, as a means to preserve their internet freedoms in the US. This online protest helped usher
in a new era of constituency building, whereby tech firms, for the first time in-mass, publicly
began to utilize their ICTs to induce the political mobilization of their customers and platform
users (Stempeck, 2015). I end my data collection period in 2019 insofar as I am keen to avoid
capturing the exogenous effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on firm user lobbying decisions.

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Dependent Variable

My dependent variable is that of total user lobbying attempts. This measure includes the
total number of times a firm has employed various user lobbying tactics (i.e., ICT mediated
attempts at politically mobilizing customers and platform users) since its inception. These user
lobbying tactics include: online advocacy ads, online petitions, social media posts, blog posts,
app messages, SMS messages, website blackouts, online/internet protests, etc. Hence, this
variable is a count variable indicating the total number of times a startup has utilized all of the
aforementioned user lobbying tactics enumerated above in an attempt to politically mobilize their
customers and users to pressure policymakers and regulators to support their policy prerogatives.
Social Movements and Media Coverage. Total user lobbying attempts (my dependent
variable), is compiled from media reports, where a news journalist has captured and published an
article in a popular local or national newspaper regarding a firm’s overt usage of a given user
lobbying political tactic in an attempt to induce stakeholder political mobilization. This approach
to capturing user lobbying attempts via media reports (which I detail below) was substantially
influenced by the Dynamics of Collective Action project, where social movement scholars (i.e.,
Doug McAdam, John McCarthy, Susan Olzak, and Sarah Soule) and their research assistants
captured and coded protest events by social movement organizations and activists that were
reported on in major US newspapers (i.e., the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and
Washington Post). Ultimately, this project culminated in the creation of a dataset (i.e., the
Dynamics of Collective Action Dataset) of US protests events from which numerous academic
papers have been published (e.g., King & Soule, 2007; Soule, 2009; Soule & King, 2008; Van
Dyke, Soule, & Taylor, 2004; Walker, Martin, & McCarthy, 2008, etc.).

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As Earl, Martin, McCarthy, and Soule (2004) explain in their review, within the field of
social movements, newspaper coverage on protest events is one of the most frequently used
methods of data collection. Given the fact that this data collection method is so widely employed
within the social movements literature, scholars have devoted substantial time and resources to
evaluating the potential biases associated with this data source. Two main sources of bias have
emerged from this investigation of newspaper data; that is, selection bias and description bias
(King & Soule, 2007).
With respect to the former (i.e., selection bias), this type of bias takes two forms. The
first of which pertains to the reality that not all protest events will be known to, covered by, and
reported on by newspapers and their journalists. Secondly, the events that are reported on by
journalists are not necessarily a random sample of all the protest events that have actually
happened. In addition to selection bias, description bias is also a challenge associated with using
media reports of protest events. This particular bias refers to the veracity of the journalistic
reporting on a given event. In general, social movement scholars have found that newspaper
journalists typically cover the "hard news" (i.e., the facts of an event) accurately, whereas "soft
news" reports (i.e., opinion-oriented pieces) are usually not as precise (Earl et al., 2004). As
such, scholars have strongly advocated for researchers to collect data from “hard news” coverage
as opposed to that of "soft news" (King & Soule, 2007).
Stempeck’s User Lobbying Blog. Similar to their coverage of protest events, newspaper
journalists also report on corporate constituency building campaigns. Matt Stempeck – a writer,
researcher, tech enthusiast, and activist who led the Digital Mobilization Team at Hillary for
America and served as Director of Civic Technology at Microsoft in New York City – has
brought this fact to light in his blog. Beginning in 2013, within his blog, Stempeck initiated the

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arduous task of tracking and collecting news articles that have reported on instances in which
tech companies (predominantly US unicorns) have mobilized their customers and users in
advancing their political agenda. Drawing on his findings, Stempeck (2015) elucidates this
phenomenon in his Harvard Business Review (HBR) piece entitled “Are Uber and Facebook
Turning Users into Lobbyists?” In this HBR article, he coins the phrase ‘user lobbying’ and
asserts that “technology companies are increasingly soliciting their (customers and) users to take
political action on their behalf to defend controversial business models from regulation, support
new programs, and promote their moral values in active political battles.”
Capturing User Lobbying Attempts in Media Coverage. To capture user lobbying
campaigns, firstly, I trained a team of 3 undergraduate research assistants on how to code
instances of user lobbying that have been reported by journalists in national and local
newspapers. Using Stempeck’s aforementioned user lobbying blog, I had my research assistants
content code these media reports identifying user lobbying in its various manifestations (e.g.,
online protests, online advocacy ads, online petitions, website blackouts, social media posts, blog
posts, app messages, SMS messages, and online Owners/hosts club actions). Once the research
assistants were able to identify user lobbying and its related tactics – by achieving intercoder
reliability rates consistently at or exceeding 90 percent agreement – I began the process on
training them on how to use key word searches to find media reports of user lobbying events that
were not included in Stempeck’s blog.
Specifically, I trained my research assistants to conduct online searches for each unicorn
firm in my dataset to identify articles from national and local newspapers (such as: the New York
Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN Business, FastCompany, Tech Crunch, the
Verge LA Times, Seattle Times, etc.), wherein user lobbying campaigns have been reported. The

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research assistants identified these media reports via Google Scholar, Factiva, Lexis-Nexis, and
ProQuest (i.e., ABI/Informs). They then read and content coded each media article to identify (1)
the date of the user lobbying event, (2) the name of the firm initiating the campaign, (3) the
number of the policy issue that the firm has been user lobbying on, (4) the abbreviation for the
user lobbying tactic that the firm employed, and (5) the attempt number for the given tactic. So,
for instance, a user lobbying event captured by a national or local media source that transpired on
November 11
th
, 2015, conducted by DraftKings, which was the 3
rd
policy issue DraftKings had
user lobbied on, wherein they used a Twitter petition tactic (i.e., TPT) for the 1
st
time, would
receive the following tactic ID: 151111DraftKings3TPT1. This specific tactic ID allows my
research assistants and me to easily identify a particular user lobbying attempt, whilst ensuring
that it is not double counted if it is covered (i.e., reported on) in multiple media outlets. Finally,
my research assistants organized all of this information (i.e., the user lobbying attempts found
via online newspaper articles) in an auxiliary file, which includes a specific identifier for each
individual user lobbying tactic utilized by a given firm in my dataset.
Attenuating Selection Bias and Description Bias. As was iterated above, selection bias
and description bias are challenges that ought to be addressed when utilizing data constructed
from media reports (Earl et al., 2004). Therefore, to attenuate the challenges of selection bias
when collecting media report data, unlike King and Soule (2007), I do not limit myself to one
major national media outlet (e.g., the New York Times, Washington Post, or Wall Street
Journal). Oftentimes, user lobbying events transpire within a given city, and as such are covered
by journalists from local media entities (solely or in addition to national media). Thus, by
including reporting from both local and national media outlets, I significantly increase the extent
to which I am able to account for user lobbying events that have taken place at the local, state,

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and national levels. And to alleviate the challenges associated with description bias, I draw on
hard news items, as opposed to "soft news" items, to ensure that I am accounting for actual
verified user lobbying events and not simply some journalist’s or reporter’s opinion thereof,
Methodologically Advancing Corporate Political Strategy. My measure of user lobbying
attempts is a substantive improvement compared to the ways in which previous empirical
scholarship has measured constituency building. For the first time in the literature, my dependent
variable captures and directly measures actual constituency building attempts as opposed to firm
self-reports of constituency building activity (e.g., Hertel-Fernandez, 2018) or a count of the
number of grassroots lobbying firms that a firm has hired to conduct its constituency building
efforts as a proxy for constituency building (e.g., Walker, 2014).

Independent Variables

My independent variables (i.e., disruptive firm, sharing economy firm, B2C firm, and
platform-based firm) come from various sources.
Disruptive Firm. My disruptive firm measure is a time varying dummy variable
indicating whether a startup has been classified as a disruptive firm and ranked (from 1-50) on a
prominent list of disruptive startups. This measure is collected from CNBC’s Disruptive 50 List.
CNBC first introduced its Disruptive 50 List in 2013; thus, my measure captures firm
disruptiveness rankings from 2013 to 2019. It is important to note that just because a firm is
ranked highly on the Disruptive 50 List one year, that does not mean that they will be ranked
highly the next year. Nor does it mean that they will make the Disruptive 50 List at all in
subsequent years. This is a yearly ranking, which varies annually based on a given startups
performance on the criteria that matter to CNBC and its Advisory Council – which comprises a

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panel of 47 experts (i.e., leading thinkers in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship) from
around the world.
CNBC’s Disruptive 50 List tracks and ranks startup firms that have caused substantial
disruption to their given market. In conducting this ranking, CNBC sends out a request for
nominations to its prestigious Disruptive 50 List. Upon receiving these nominations, CNBC
requests that the startups submit a good amount of quantitative and qualitative data as it relates to
their business. For instance, startups are required to submit data on workforce size and diversity,
scalability, sales, and user growth. These data are paired with data from CNBC's outside partners
(i.e., Pitchbook and IBISWorld), which includes data on fundraising, implied valuations, and
investor quality. The Advisory Council then ranks the criteria by overall importance, as well as
startups’ ability to disrupt established industries and firms (i.e., publicly listed companies).
Typically, the Advisory Council gives the highest weighting to the following categories: a
startup’s scalability, its user growth, its use of breakthrough technologies (e.g., AI and machine
learning), and the size of the industry it is disrupting as the most important criteria for the
ranking; nevertheless, to make the final list, CNBC's ranking model is designed to ensure that
startups must score highly on a broad range of criteria.
In terms of qualitative data, startups are also asked to submit important information,
including: descriptions of the firm and its core business model, its ideal customers, and company
milestones recently achieved. Based on this information, a team of more than 70 CNBC editorial
staff, in concert with the members of the Advisory Council, read the qualitative submissions and
provide a holistic assessment for each startup. This qualitative assessment is then combined with
the weighted quantitative score (explicated above) to determine which 50 startups have made
CNBC's Disruptive 50 List and in what order.

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Sharing Economy. My sharing economy firm measure is a dummy variable, which
indicates if a firm is has a sharing economy business model. That is, it specifies whether a given
startup helps to facilitate the use and monetization of idle assets and services through short-term
peer-to-peer transactions – typically through a community-based online platform. I collect these
data from individual firm websites, where the given firm indicates whether the company operates
in the sharing economy. Typically, this information can be found in the About section of a given
company’s website. If the startup operates in the sharing economy, then it is coded as 1. While, if
the firm does not operate in the sharing economy, it is coded as 0.
B2C. This dichotomous variable indicates whether a firm classifies itself as a business-to-
consumer firm or not. I capture this measure by visiting the website of the given firm and
determining from its About page and Product/Service pages whether the firm sells its
product/services directly to just individual customers, to both individual and business customers,
or just to business customers. For firms that sell their product/services only to individual
customers or to both individual and business customers, they are defined within this measure as
B2C firms. On the other hand, firms that sell their product/services only to business customers
are classified within this measure as B2B firms. As such, B2C firms are coded as 1, while B2B
firms are coded as 0.
Platform-Based Firm. Similar to the measures for sharing economy and B2C, the
platform-based firm measure is also a dummy variable. This measure indicates whether a given
startup uses ICTs to connect supply-side users (i.e., sellers) of a given product and/or service
with potential demand-side users (i.e., buyers) via its online platform. The platform-based firm
dummy is collected from individual firm websites, wherein they signify whether their business is
designed to broker ecommerce transactions via their platform. If indeed the firm is designated as

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such, they are classified as a platform and receive a coding of 1. If they are not classified as a
platform, then they receive a coding of 0.

Control Variables

I also control for several factors that could potentially confound the effect of my
independent variables (i.e., disruptive firm, sharing economy firm, B2C firm, and platform-based
firm) on my dependent variable (i.e., total user lobbying attempts). My control variables include
political measures (i.e., individual political contributions, number of lobbyists, and political
connections), as well as typical firm-level controls like industry regulation and size.
Corporate Political Action. With respect to the political controls in this study, I include
data on political contributions, number of lobbyists, and political connections. Including these
controls allows me to account for the confounding effect of being politically active on the
propensity of a given startup to user lobby. All of the aforementioned political measures have
been accessed via the Center for Responsible Politics’ Open Secrets database.
I measure a startup’s political contributions as the amount of total funds (in US dollars)
that individual employees, owners of the given firm, and those individuals’ immediate family
members have contributed to the campaigns of federal level candidates (i.e., those individual
politicians who are running for Presidency, Senate, and House of Representatives), from both the
Democrat and Republican parties, in a given year. This is a common measure that is utilized
within corporate political strategy (and related literatures) to account for political donations (e.g.,
Aggarwal et al., 2012; Bhagwat, et al., 2020; Hadani & Schuler, 2013).
I also include a control capturing the extent of a firm’s lobbying activity. This is
measured as the total number of lobbyists a startup employs. Within this measure, there are two

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types of lobbyists which are captured. The first type is inside lobbyists who are individual
lobbyists employed directly by the firm itself. The second type is outside lobbyists who are
individual lobbyists employed within lobbying firms of which the given company is a client. My
measure encompasses the total number of both inside and outside lobbyists that a firm employs
directly and through a third party.
Finally, my political connections variable is a count measure that includes the total
number of revolvers or reverse revolvers that a firm currently employs or formerly employed.
Revolvers are members of Congress, Congressional staffers, and government regulators who
have left the public sector and are currently employed with private sector organizations and
lobbying firms that, in many cases, they used to oversee. Whilst reverse revolvers are those
individuals who have left the private sector to take key positions (i.e., positions of influence) in
the government. The Center for Responsible Politics’ Revolving Door Database contains “any
person with previous or current government experience who also has held, or currently holds, a
key professional position in the private sector where they can reasonably be expected to
influence, or be seeking to influence, public policy decisions.” Thus, my political connections
measure is a count of both a startup’s revolvers and reverse revolvers. It is important to note here
that, insofar as I am aware, this is the first time within the literature on the political strategies of
entrepreneurial enterprises (e.g., Grandy & Hiatt, 2020; Hiatt et al., 2018; Hiatt & Park, 2013;
Ozcan & Gurses, 2015; Ozcan & Gurses, 2018) that we have utilized a measure to account for
the political connections of a given startup – although there are numerous studies that have
measured political connections amongst established firms (e.g., Faccio et al., 2006; Fisman,
2001; Jia et al., 2021; Jiang et al., 2021).

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Industry Regulation. My control variable for industry regulation (i.e., high industry
regulation) is a dummy variable signifying if a company is in an industry with high levels of
regulation. I borrow this measure from Coates, Fama and French in their classification for the
intensity of regulation in a given industry (i.e., Al-Ubaydli & McLaughlin, 2014).
Firm Size. My measure for firm size – which is a count variable signifying the firm’s
total number of employees per annum (Chambers et al., 2018) – comes from the PrivCo
database. This database includes some of the most comprehensive data on startup firms (which,
given the private nature of these companies, are challenging to come by – when compared to
publicly listed firms). In general, the measures for number of employees allows me to control for
the impact of a given startup’s size on the relationship between my predictors (i.e.,
disruptiveness, shared economy firm, B2C capabilities, and platform capabilities) and the
propensity of the firm to engage in user lobbying campaigns. Controlling for firm size is
important (even when comparing between startups) insofar as larger firms are more likely to
engage in political activities when compared to smaller ones (Hillman & Hitt, 1999; Schuler &
Rehbein, 1997). Moreover, generally speaking, larger firms are typically more well-resourced
than their smaller counterparts (Haveman et al., 2017), and as such, they can utilize these
resources to mobilize collective action amongst their grassroots constituents (i.e., customers and
platform users) through user lobbying (Hillman et al., 2004).
It is important to reiterate that there is a good amount of missing data within Privco (and
all other databases) for startups. As it relates to this study, this is the case regarding data on
startups’ employee numbers. For this reason, my models in which this control is included have
many fewer observations and as such are simply suggestive of the potential impact of firm size
(until further data is obtained).

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Estimation Strategy

From the outset, it is necessary to iterate that this is an exploratory study. As such, causal
claims will not be advanced herein. Rather, the claims that I hypothesize and test are
correlational in nature. To this end, my study exploits panel data structure and uses negative-
binomial regression analysis with random effects. Given the fact that my outcome variable (i.e.,
user lobbying attempts) is a count variable with a substantive amount of overdispersion (i.e.,
substantial differencing between the mean and variance of the outcome variable, as will be
shown below), a negative-binomial approach is the most appropriate. In essence, negative-
binomial regression has the same mean structure as Poisson regression, however, it has an
additional parameter, which allows it to model overdispersion (Hilbe, 2011). The inclusion of
random effects – in concert with negative-binomial regression analysis – allows me to estimate
the effect of my independent variables (i.e., disruptive firm, sharing economy firm, B2C firm, and
platform-based firm) on the extent to which high-growth tech startups engage in user lobbying.
Be it the fact that disruptive firm is the only predictor that varies over time, I employ random
effects insofar as it allows one to estimate effects for time invariant variables (which is not
possible to do with fixed effects).

RESULTS

Tables 2 and 3 present descriptive statistics for the dependent variable, independent
variables, and control variables in this study. Specifically, Table 2 reports the number of unicorn
firms in the sample, the number of firms that have engaged in user lobbying at least once during
the period of analysis, the number of firms that are classified as disruptors, B2C, sharing
economy, and platforms, the number of firms that have engaged in lobbying and given political

114
contributions, and the number of firms within industries that are highly regulated. While Table 3
provides summary statistics and the correlation matrix for these variables. More specifically, it
reports the means, standard deviations, and correlations among the dependent, independent, and
control variables in this study.

Table 2: Descriptive Statistics
Descriptive Statistics
Sample Number of Firms 286
Dependent Variable Number of Firms Engaging in
User Lobbying
44
Independent Variable Number of Platforms 56
Independent Variable Number of Disruptors 74
Independent Variable Number of B2C Firms 114
Independent Variable Number of Gig Firms 18
Independent Variable Number of Firms Engaging in
Lobbying Policymakers
76
Independent Variable Number of Firms Engaging in
Political Contributions
29
Independent Variable Number of Firms with High
Regulation
68

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Table 3: Correlations and Descriptive Statistics
Correlations and Descriptive Statistics

Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1 User Lobbying
Attempts
0.13 0.96
2 Disruptor 0.06 0.24 0.11
3 Sharing
Economy
0.06 0.23
0.25 0.08

4 B2C 0.37 0.48 0.10 0.04 0.22
5 Platform 0.19 0.39 0.21 0.06 0.29 0.24
6 Political
Connections
0.19 0.64 0.29 0.16 0.12 0.03 0.11
7 Political
Contributions
0.69 2.54 0.22 0.21 0.05 0.02 0.07 0.60
8 Lobbying 0.07 0.32 0.19 0.12 0.07 0.02 0.05 0.75 0.63
9 High Regulation 0.23 0.42 0.07 0.09 0.03 0.13 -0.09 0.22 0.14 0.27
10 Employee# 5.98 1.38 0.14 0.17 0.04 -0.02 0.02 0.37 0.39 0.38 -0.02
Note. n = 286.

Table 4 presents the results of the negative-binomial regressions testing my hypotheses. I
conduct negative-binomial regressions – as opposed to Poisson regressions – insofar as there is
overdispersion with respect to user lobbying attempts, my outcome variable (i.e., There is a
substantive difference between the mean and variance of this dependent variable), which can be
seen in Table 3. In such cases, negative-binomial regression analyses are the most appropriate
(Hilbe, 2011). It is important to note that the coefficients from the negative-binomial regression
analyses in Table 4 are difficult to interpret; however, it is rather straightforward to discern
whether a coefficient is significant, and if a hypothesis is substantiated.

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Table 4: Negative-Binomial Regressions with Random Effects
Negative-Binomial Regressions with Random Effects
Dependent
Variables
User Lobbying Attempts Count
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6

Disruptive
(Dummy)
H1

0.902***
(0.275)

0.698**
(0.291)
Sharing
Economy
(Dummy)
H2

0.976***
(0.373)
0.249
(0.420)
B2C (Dummy)
H3

0.389
(0.279)
0.388
(0.248)
Platform
(Dummy)
H4

1.595***
(0.279)
1.415***
(0.291)
Political
Connections

0.699***
(0.159)
0.659***
(0.159)
0.684***
(0.155)
0.707***
(0.157)
0.698***
(0.152)
0.659***
(0.152)
Political
Contributions

0.081**
(0.038)
0.049
(0.041)
0.086**
(0.038)
0.084**
(0.038)
0.105***
(0.037)
0.081**
(0.039)
Lobbying

-0.419
(0.296)
-0.332
(0.288)
-0.404
(0.271)
-0.412
(0.293)
-0.495*
(0.275)
-0.398
(0.265)
High
Regulation

0.246
(0.309)
0.128
(0.309)
0.023
(0.306)
0.231
(0.307)
0.436
(0.289)
0.244
(0.306)
Employee#

Constant

-2.634***
(0.246)
-2.714***
(0.251)
-2.933***
(0.280)
-2.906***
(0.312)
-3.960***
(0.319)
-4.215***
(0.359)
Observations &
Firms
2,474
286
2,474
286
2,474
286
2,474
286
2,474
286
2,474
286
*p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

Note: This table presents the results of the negative-binomial regressions with random effects. Regression
coefficients are presented for Models 1 - 6. Corresponding standard errors are included in parentheses under each
coefficient.

Given the difficulty of interpreting the coefficients from the negative-binomial regression
analyses in Table 4, I have included another regression table to assist in this regard. Table 5
reports the coefficients of the negative-binomial regression analyses as incident rate ratios

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(IRRs). These IRR values are equal to my coefficients from the original negative-binomial
regression exponentiated. I interpret the findings from this study (based on Table 5) below.

Table 5: Negative-Binomial Regressions with Random Effects and IRRs
Negative-Binomial Regressions with Random Effects and IRRs
Dependent
Variables
User Lobbying Attempts Count
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6

Disruptive
(Dummy)
H1

2.465***
(0.678)

2.009**
(0.585)
Sharing
Economy
(Dummy)
H2

2.653***
(0.989)
1.283
(0.539)
B2C (Dummy)
H3

1.476
(0.413)
1.475
(0.366)
Platform
(Dummy)
H4

4.928***
(1.378)
4.116***
(1.197)
Political
Connections

2.012***
(0.319)
1.934***
(0.309)
1.981***
(0.306)
2.027***
(0.318)
2.010***
(0.306)
1.934***
(0.293)
Political
Contributions

1.084**
(0.042)
1.051
(0.043)
1.090**
(0.042)
1.087**
(0.041)
1.111***
(0.041)
1.085**
(0.043)
Lobbying

0.657
(0.194)
0.718
(0.206)
0.668
(0.181)
0.663
(0.194)
0.609*
(0.168)
0.672
(0.178)
High
Regulation

1.279
(0.396)
1.136
(0.352)
1.023
(0.313)
1.260
(0.387)
1.546
(0.447)
1.277
(0.390)
Employee#

Constant

0.072***
(0.018)
0.066***
(0.017)
0.053***
(0.015)
0.055***
(0.017)
0.019***
(0.006)
-4.215***
(0.359)
Observations &
Firms
2,474
286
2,474
286
2,474
286
2,474
286
2,474
286
2,474
286
*p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

Note: This table presents the results of the negative-binomial regressions with random effects. In lieu of regression
coefficients, incident rate ratios (IRRs) are presented for Models 1 - 6 (IRRs make it easier to interpret the size of
the effect for each variable.). Corresponding standard errors are included in parentheses under each IRR.

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Model 1 (of Table 5) includes only control variables. Model 2 tests the effect of being a
disruptive startup on a firm’s propensity to engage in user lobbying. The results indicate that
disruptiveness was significantly positively associated with a startup’s user lobbying attempts (p
< .01). More specifically, the average annual user lobbying attempts for disruptive startups is
approximately 2.5 times greater than for non-disruptors. This finding provides strong support for
Hypothesis 1.
Model 3 tests Hypothesis 2, which predicted that being a sharing economy startup (or a
startup with a sharing economy business model) increases the likelihood that a given firm would
engage in user lobbying. Similar to Hypothesis 1, the results demonstrate that there is indeed a
significant positive effect of having a sharing economy business model on a startup’s
engagement in user lobbying (p < .01). That is, the average annual user lobbying attempts for
sharing economy startups is approximately 2.7 times greater than for startups not operating in the
sharing economy. This finding substantiates Hypothesis 2.
Model 4 tests the effect of being a B2C firm (as opposed to a B2B firm) on the extent to
which a startup would attempt to politically mobilize its customers and platform users. In so
doing, Model 4 tests Hypothesis 3. Unlike the results for Hypotheses 1 and 2, Hypothesis 3 is not
substantiated by the results. In short, this finding does not provide sufficient evidence to
demonstrate that B2C startups are more inclined to user lobby when compared to their B2B
counterparts.
Hypothesis 4 predicted that being a platform-based startup would substantially increase
the propensity of a given firm to initiate user lobbying campaigns. The results evinced in Model
5, which tests Hypothesis 4, reveal a significant positive association between being a platform
and a startup’s willingness to engage in user lobbying (p < .01). Essentially, the average annual

119
user lobbying attempts for platform-based startups is approximately 4.9 times greater than for
non-platforms. This finding provides substantive support for Hypothesis 4.
Finally, in the fully specified model (i.e., Model 6), Hypotheses 1 and 4 continue to be
supported (Hypothesis 1 at the .05 level and Hypothesis 4 at the .01 level), as they were in
Models 2 and 5, respectively. Specifically, in the fully specified model, the average annual user
lobbying attempts for disruptive startups is approximately 2 times greater than for non-platforms,
while the average annual user lobbying attempts for platform-based startups is approximately 4.1
times greater than for startups that are not platforms. Hypothesis 3, which examines the effect of
being a B2C firm on startups’ user lobbying attempts, continues to go unsubstantiated in the fully
specified model (as was such in Model 4). Hypothesis 2 (which explores the relationship
between being a sharing economy startup and a firm’s propensity to user lobby), on the other
hand, goes from being supported in Model 3 to being unsubstantiated in Model 6 (i.e., the fully
specified model). This shift in significance cannot be attributed to the issue of multicollinearity.
Essentially, I checked the initial model for multicollinearity (Greene, 2012) and ran variance
inflation factor (VIF) analyses. The results remained consistent and all of the VIF scores were
well under the 10-point threshold.
As a robustness check, to account for potential omitted variable bias as it relates to firm
size, I include a startup’s number of employees as an additional control variable. Unfortunately,
as is often the case with firmographic data on startups, there are a substantial number of missing
observations (i.e., There is incomplete employee number data for numerous unicorns in this
dataset). For instance, the number of firm-year observations decreases substantially from 2,474
in all of the models shown in Tables 4 and 5 to 1,437 firm-year observations when the employee
number control is included; despite this challenge, in the fully specified model, having a sharing

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economy business model is found to be significantly positively associated with user lobbying (p
< .01) and being a platform is also found to be significantly positively associated with user
lobbying (p < .01).
The second robustness check that I run is that of Poisson regression analysis. Effectively,
I re-run Models 1 through 6 (as is shown in Tables 4 and 5); however, I do this time with Poisson
regressions as opposed to negative-binomial regressions. In general, the results in these models
are consistent with that elucidated within the fully specified model of Tables 4 and 5 (i.e., Model
6). That is, disruptiveness is found to be significantly positively associated with user lobbying (p
< .05) and being a platform is also found to be significantly positively associated with user
lobbying (p < .05). And when testing Hypotheses 2 and 3 independently, the Poisson regression
analyses demonstrate that having a sharing economy business model and being a B2C startup are
significantly positively associated with user lobbying (p < .01).

Summary of Results

In summary, the findings of this work demonstrate that being a disruptive firm, having a
sharing economy business model, and being a platform-based firm is positively and significantly
associated with an increase in user lobbying attempts. The results also demonstrate that B2C
firms are positively associated with user lobbying; however, in a non-significant manner. The
fact that the findings of the negative-binomial regressions are pretty consistent when adding the
additional employee number control, as well as when running Poisson regression analyses,
further supports the findings of this study. Thus, I hope that this exploratory work will help to
create the foundation for more rigorous causal analyses within the domains of user lobbying (as a
constituency building tactic) in the future.

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DISCUSSION

This chapter examines the impact of a high-growth startup’s competitive and regulatory
environment, as well as its market-based capabilities on the extent to which it will engage in user
lobbying (i.e., a nascent tech mediated form of constituency building or grassroots political
mobilization). In my theoretical framework, when entering the competitive marketplace, high-
growth technology startups challenge the norms, rules, policies, and regulations that have been
mutually agreed upon and established by incumbent firms and their nonmarket counterparts (e.g.,
unions, policymakers, regulators, etc.) through the introduction and proliferation of disruptive
technologies and/or controversial business models. This insurgent incursion creates competitive
market and regulatory uncertainty for incumbents, ultimately engendering a political response
thereof. Given the fact that market and nonmarket incumbents are already established in the
given political market, they typically have more influence over policymakers and regulators than
startups; and as such, they most often opt to respond to the startup’s intrusion by pressuring
policymakers/regulators to create and implement public and regulatory policy that will slow the
growth and overall competitiveness of the startup. This perilous environment in-turn creates
regulatory uncertainty for the high-growth startup who responds by leveraging its competitive
market-based capabilities (i.e., platform capabilities) to politically mobilize customers and users
to advocate for the startup’s policy position – directly to policymakers and regulators – to protect
the high-growth startup’s interests. In elucidating this phenomenon, I integrate the political
markets literature (from corporate political strategy) with that of field theory (from sociology) to
forward a theory of transforming political markets.
In testing this emergent theorizing of transforming political markets (wherein high-
growth tech startups employ their market capabilities to user lobby as a means of insulating

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themselves from incumbent attack and the resulting regulatory uncertainty), I found support for 3
of my 4 hypotheses. That is, my results show that being classified as a disruptive firm in the
marketplace is associated with an increase in the extent to which a high-growth tech startup will
engage in user lobbying. Similarly, I found that sharing economy firms are more inclined to
conduct user lobbying campaigns than tech startups that do not operate in the sharing economy.
These two results seem to indicate that indeed high-growth startups with highly disruptive
technologies and those that are operating within the sharing economy (i.e., a relatively
controversial business model), engender substantive market and nonmarket opposition in their
given political market, wherein market/nonmarket incumbents and policymakers/regulators find
that it is in their best interest to advocate for and to institute policies/regulations detrimental to
the competitiveness of the high-growth startup.
Similar to my findings examining the impact of a startup’s political market on its
proclivity to user lobby, I found that platform-based startups are also more inclined – relative to
their non-platform counterparts – to engage in user lobbying. This finding seems to indicate that
successful platforms are able to leverage their capabilities and expertise (in connecting demand
and supply-side users), their user surplus (i.e., positive network effects), their closeness to users
(who have become absolutely dependent upon their technology/service), and their ever-growing
user-base to politically pressure policymakers and regulators to not create or implement policies
that would have negative implications for the startup’s growth and overall competitiveness – at a
relatively low-cost.

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Implications

My work has important theoretical implications for the study of corporate political
strategy amongst entrepreneurial firms in general and constituency building amongst high-
growth tech startups in particular. First, insofar as I am aware this work is the first of its kind to
empirically examine and elucidate the nascent an emergent form of constituency building now
known as user lobbying.
Second, this study extends theorizing on political markets (e.g., Bonardi et al., 2005;
Kingsley et al., 2012) by integrating it with field theory (e.g., Evans & Kay, 2008; Fligstein,
1996, 2001; Fligstein & McAdam, 2011; Goldstone; 2004). In so doing, it facilitates a deeper
theoretical understanding of how successful high-growth startups transform political markets by
challenging the norms, rules, policies, and regulations that have been erected by incumbents in
governing competition within the given marketplace – a domain hitherto undertheorized in the
corporate political strategy literature. In particular, this work theorizes that when a given political
market is disrupted by a startup with a superior technology and/or controversial business model,
market and nonmarket incumbents employ their political connections to and influence over
policymakers and regulators to instigate policy/regulatory change that has negative ramifications
for the startup. This scenario ultimately creates regulatory uncertainty for the high-growth
startup, which responds in-kind using its closeness to customers and demand and supply-side
users, in concert with its platform capabilities, to politically mobilize these individuals in
protecting its interests.
Third, this study advances nascent theorizing within the political capabilities literature,
which asserts that firms can achieve synergies between their market and political capabilities (Jia
& Mayer, 2016). In extending this work, I argue that high-growth tech startups are able to

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leverage their market capabilities as political capabilities. Specifically, startups are able to use
their platform capabilities – which encompass their ability to connect demand and supply-side
users, create user surplus (i.e., positive network effects), develop close relations with their users,
and achieve economies of scale with respect to their network user-base – to induce the political
mobilization of their demand and supply-side users.
Fourth, the current manuscript empirically enhances our understanding of the firm and
environmental antecedents related to constituency building insofar as it measures user lobbying
attempts as opposed to some proxy or firm self-report thereof. This measure is a much more
direct measure of constituency building when compared to that of Walker (2014) who uses the
number of times a company appears as the customer of a public affairs consultancy as a proxy
for the extent to which a firm engages in grassroots political mobilization. Although Walker’s
(2014) novel measure helps to advance the literature by proxying for grassroots mobilization
efforts, it does not actually measure the extent to which firms attempt to induce the political
mobilization of their stakeholders as an outcome. The user lobbying measure introduced in this
work, however, uses the social movements approach of coding media reports of grassroots
mobilization efforts (i.e., constituency building) in order to capture and quantify actual user
lobbying campaigns of high-growth tech startups. So far as I am aware, this is the first time that
we have been able to directly measure constituency building within the academic literature.
Fifth, this research allows us to finally begin accounting for the impact of ICTs on the
constituency building process. As Lord (2000a) predicted, ICTs are beginning to have a
substantive effect on constituency building. As this paper demonstrates, high-growth tech
startups are able to employ their ICT capabilities as political capabilities in advancing their
political interests through user lobbying. And by leveraging artificial intelligence, they are able

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to do so in a manor far more efficient and cost-effective than corporate constituency builders of
the past (Fogg, 2008, 2009).
Finally, this study contributes to the existent literature by dispelling the fallacy currently
permeating constituency building research. That is, that only large established/incumbent and
politically connected firms are capable of inducing stakeholder mobilization in pursuit of
achieving political goals (Heath et al., 1995; Hertel-Fernandez, 2018; Hillman & Hitt, 1999;
Lord, 2003). To the contrary, this work shows that high-growth startups are also able to
successfully employ constituency building as a political strategy. In effect, they are able to
leverage their platform capabilities, within a contentious political environment, to mobilize their
customers and users to forward their public/regulatory policy interests.

CONCLUSION

In brief, within this work, I synergize insights from corporate political strategy and field
theory to introduce theorizing on transforming political markets. That is the notion that when
high-growth startups disrupt market and nonmarket incumbents within a given political market,
incumbents respond by leveraging their influence over policymakers and regulators to erect
policies/regulations that will impede startups’ market entry and ascension. In-turn, startups
respond to this uncertain policy environment by leveraging their platform capabilities to mobilize
collective action (i.e., user lobbying) amongst their customers and users. Examining the
environmental and firmographic antecedents to user lobbying amongst tech startups, I find that
regulatory uncertainty – as is proxied by a startup’s classification as a disruptive and/or sharing
economy firm – and platform capabilities, increase the propensity of a startup to engage in user
lobbying. Taken together, these findings seem to substantiate the notion that both environmental

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(i.e., competitive) and firm-level factors (in tandem) positively affect the extent to which a firm
will initiate constituency building (i.e., user lobbying) campaigns. Nevertheless, there are still
many remaining opportunities to advance our theoretical and empirical understanding of the
drivers, processes, and boundary conditions related to high-growth startups’ engagement with
constituency building (in general) and user lobbying (in particular), as an ever-prominent and
formidable political tactic.

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CHAPTER 4
FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR USER LOBBYING AND CONSTITUENCY BUILDING
RESEARCH

INTRODUCTION

This chapter of the dissertation, builds upon the integrative literature review
demonstrated in Chapter 2, as well as the empirical exploration of the antecedents of user
lobbying amongst high-growth tech startups presented in Chapter 3, to chart a comprehensive
trajectory for a future research agenda as it pertains to user lobbying (one of the most recent and
eminent corporate constituency building tactics) in particular and constituency building (one of
three essential, yet academically overlooked, corporate political strategies) in general.
Specifically, the future research agenda proposed in this chapter focuses on (1) further
developing our comprehension of user lobbying (the emergent tech-mediated form of
constituency building elucidated in this dissertation), (2) extending our understanding of the
nuances associated with the corporate grassroots mobilization process, (3) the importance of
updating Hillman and Hitt’s (1999) Typology of Corporate Constituency Building Tactics given
the emergence of user lobbying, and (4) the internationalization of constituency building
(particularly user lobbying), and its implications on corporate political strategizing and
democracy throughout the world.

User Lobbying

The study presented in Chapter 3 has shed light on several areas of future inquiry. Firstly,
although the current study within this dissertation helps to advance our understanding of the
antecedents of user lobbying amongst high-growth tech startups, it is still exploratory in nature;

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hence, we are in need of more causal examinations of this ever-important corporate political
phenomenon. Given the reality that data accessibility – especially as it relates to market-based
controls (e.g., firm valuation, revenue, profitability, number of employees, etc.) – can be a
challenge in building datasets comprised of startups (even high-performing ones like unicorns),
constituency building researchers should strongly consider the instrumental variable (IV)
approach (Bound et al., 1995). Identifying an instrument (i.e., a predictor, Z) that uniquely
affects the outcome (i.e., user lobbying, Y) solely through a specific predictor (i.e., platform-
based firm, X), and is not correlated with the error term (e.g., omitted variables, 𝜀), would allow
researchers to isolate exogenous variation in treatment (uncorrelated with the error term). The
challenge of implementing this econometric approach, however, is actually identifying a suitable
instrument. As Semadeni et al. (2014) note, identifying variables that strongly correlate with the
endogenous variable, but not with the error term, is in practice a difficult undertaking;
nonetheless, exploring the IV approach – and identifying an IV that is both theoretically relevant
and empirically uncorrelated with the error term – is a worthwhile pursuit for constituency
building scholars interested in forwarding and substantiating causal claims.
In addition to econometric analyses (like that of IV), there are also alternative empirical
approaches that can help to facilitate the causal investigation of user lobbying, albeit in an
inductive manner. Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fs/QCA), for instance, may
present a promising pathway in this regard. A study employing fs/QCA could examine the causal
conditions/pathways (i.e., the combination of factors) that lead a high-growth tech startup to
engage in user lobbying substantively, moderately, minimally, or not at all. Such an approach
would allow us to build on the current study in determining the causal factors that lead a tech
startup to utilize user lobbying at varying levels of intensity or to not use this political tactic at

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all. It would also help to pinpoint the causal conditions/factors that are necessary and sufficient
to entice a high-performing startup to user lobby.
Another important domain for future research is comprehending how startups actually
politically mobilize their stakeholders in a transparent and overt manner (Kollman, 1998;
McNutt & Boland, 2007). This type of question would require a process analysis, which would
allow researchers to provide a detailed enumeration of the various processes and mechanisms
that firms with disruptive and/or business models employ in the political mobilization of their
customers and users, as well as the mediating role of technology therein. Such a study could
advance the theoretical foundation of constituency building by reevoking the literature on
resource dependency theory (RDT) in concert with that of stakeholder and resource-based
theories to explain how politically mobilizing stakeholders using startups’ ICT capabilities could
allow these firms to reduce their dependence on the external business environment (Pfeffer &
Salancik, 1978). Finally, from a methodological perspective, this work could introduce the
multiple-case study method to the corporate political strategy literature in general and
constituency building research in particular, as a means to induct a general theory of the process
of corporate grassroots mobilization.
Lastly, within the corporate political strategy literature, we have yet to fully ascertain
from whence political capabilities arise. Jia and Mayer (2016) have argued that political
capabilities emerge from market capabilities, which firms prudently leverage in the service of
their political objectives. The current study furthers this line of reasoning and provides some
empirical evidence to substantiate this claim; however, more evidence is needed (particularly
causal evidence) to further demonstrate the effect of market capabilities on the development of
political capabilities. Moreover, when a startup is able to leverage its market capabilities to

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develop political capabilities, does it then leverage its political capabilities to develop others? If
so, then how does it do so? And if so, then does the startup simultaneously employ these political
strategies in concert? Or does it gradually phase out of one and into another? These are just a few
of the questions that constituency building researchers (interested in the emergent user lobbying
tactic) ought to strongly consider exploring.
Although user lobbying, in my opinion, is one of the most promising avenues of future
research as it pertains to the political strategy of constituency building, there are other important
(and related) areas within this domain of inquiry that are in need of our scholarly attention. I
outline several of these additional areas in the rest of this chapter.

Exploring and Elucidating the Corporate Grassroots Mobilization Process

As I explain in the literature review of Chapter 2, of all of the constituency building
tactics, corporate grassroots mobilization has received the most attention in the academic
literature; nonetheless, there is still much to be learned regarding the intricacies of how this
process works in the real world, and the mechanisms that make inducing the political
mobilization of grassroots stakeholders possible.
The Intricacies of the Corporate Grassroots Mobilization Process. Irrespective of the
particular stakeholder that is being politically mobilized by the firm, there is general agreement
amongst researchers that there are certain steps that firms utilize as part of the mobilization
process (Keim et al., 1984; Lord, 2000b). The existent literature asserts that to mobilize
stakeholders firms have to (1) identify stakeholders who are potentially mobilizable, (2) educate
those stakeholders about the given policy issue and the firms position on that issue, and (3)
determine how to persuade and/or motivate stakeholders to mobilize in some capacity (Heath et

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al., 1995; Keim et al., 1984; Lord, 2000b). Although there is general agreement that these steps
are important to the corporate grassroots mobilization process, the intricacies and nuances
associated with the implementation of each of these steps by firms remain an enigma.
Maintaining a superficial understanding of the corporate grassroots mobilization process has
occluded us from fully comprehending the firm-level characteristics and strategic choices (i.e.,
the antecedents and mechanisms), which are essential to this process. As such, within the
academic literature, we are not able to concretely elucidate the various ways in which firms
induce stakeholder mobilization nor can we definitively explain why stakeholders ultimately
mobilize on their behalf. With this reality in mind, it is essential that future research answer the
following question: what is/are the (detailed) process(es) that firms employ to politically
mobilize their stakeholders?
In answering this question, researchers of corporate grassroots mobilization ought to
begin by enhancing the theoretical foundation on which this literature is situated. One glaring
deficiency in the constituency building literature generally (including that of corporate grassroots
mobilization) is that it is extremely lacking with respect to theorization; hence, a theoretical
piece that builds on previous work by combining it with theories and insights from related fields
of study would be most helpful. For instance, a theoretical work of this kind could draw upon the
social movements literature (Benford & Snow, 2000; Fligstein, 2001; Ganz, 2000; McCarthy &
Zald. 1977; Snow et al., 1986) from sociology, the legitimacy literature from organizational
theory and organizational behavior (e.g. Suchman, 1995; Tost, 2011) and the literatures on
credibility (e.g. Haley, 1996; Haley & Wilkinson, 1994; Hammond, 1987; Lynn et al., 1978;
Reid et al., 1981) and persuasion (Campbell & Kirmani, 2000; Friestad & Wright, 1994; Kirmani
& Campbell, 2004; Miller & Sinclair, 2009) from marketing to develop and propose a robust

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theoretical model of corporate grassroots mobilization, which thoroughly explains the process
thereof (from stakeholder mobilization initiation to actual stakeholder mobilization) and the
numerous mechanisms essential to inducing stakeholder mobilization, such as: firm-stakeholder
mutual self-interest (Olson, 1965), firm-stakeholder shared moral inclination (Suchman, 1995),
stakeholder perceptions of firm credibility (Haley, 1996), and stakeholder knowledge of
persuasive agent’s (i.e., firm’s) goals and tactics (Miller & Sinclair, 2009), etc.
Future research which produces conceptual frameworks (similar to that outlined above),
as well as empirical tests of these theoretical models (e.g., employing qualitative methods, such
as: interviews, case studies, and multiple case methods), will be a major boon to the further
invigoration and development of the constituency building literature.

Updating the Typology of Corporate Constituency Building Tactics

With the emergence of both ICTs and different forms of corporate activism, the
constituency building tactics enumerated in the typology of Hillman and Hitt (1999) may be a bit
out of date. For over two decades, this typology has provided us with a solid conceptual
framework by which to comprehend and examine the various tactics embedded in the political
strategy of constituency building; nevertheless, given the rapid proliferation of grassroots
mobilization technologies (Phone2Action, 2017) and the increased willingness of firms and their
internal stakeholders (e.g., CEOs, employees, shareholders, etc.) to take public stances and make
public pronouncements on controversial political issues affecting the firm (Briscoe & Safford,
2008; Chatterji & Toffel, 2019; Hambrick & Wowak, 2019; Rehbein et al., 2004), it is hard to
believe that the typology of Hillman and Hitt (1999) fully accounts for the latest evolution of
constituency building tactics in its current manifestation.

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For example, when examining the online protests launched by the internet technology
firms (e.g., Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, etc.) from 2011-2012 in
support of safeguarding protections on internet freedom, the world was introduced to
constituency building tactics, which had yet to be seen. In an attempt to mobilize their grassroots
stakeholders – by convincing them to contact their elected representatives in the US House of
Representatives and the Senate in order to oppose and eventually kill bills intended to reduce
internet freedoms – internet technology firms utilized website blackouts, online petitions, blog
posts, political discounts/promotions (for consumers), and employee/consumer social-political
clubs. These new constituency building tactics, which I have referred to as user lobbying within
this dissertation, helped the tech industry to successfully mobilize their stakeholders to kill the
Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) in the House of Representatives and the Protect Intellectual
Property Act (PIPA) in the Senate.
Another potential area of future research, with regards to further developing the typology
of constituency building tactics, is within the domain of corporate sociopolitical activism (e.g.,
brand, CEO, shareholder, and employee activism). Unlike constituency building, where firms
attempt to mobilize their grassroots stakeholders on political issues that affect the interests of the
firm, with corporate sociopolitical activism, firms and/or their internal stakeholders (e.g., CEOs,
employees, shareholders, etc.) take public stances on controversial sociopolitical issues within
society, which do not necessarily directly affect the firm; however, even though constituency
building and corporate sociopolitical activism are distinct, there are those instances where there
is overlap. For example, Patagonia’s political campaign against the Trump Administration’s
repeal of Obama era protections on national monuments (e.g., Bears Ears National Monument in
southeastern Utah) is a great instance of this convergence. In this example, Patagonia (a benefits

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corporation) initiated a constituency building effort to protect its business interests (i.e., the
preservation of national monuments and wildlife sanctuaries as a means to protect their market
share in the outdoor apparel industry), whilst simultaneously engaging in corporate activism (i.e.,
Patagonia’s founder, CEO, and employees publicly engaged in protests to protect Bears Ears
National Monument). It is in rare cases like this, where socially conscious firms may employ
corporate activist tactics in concert with a constituency building strategy.
Compared to other types of CPA (e.g., lobbying, campaign contributions, astroturfing,
etc.) corporate sociopolitical activism (i.e., activism conducted by CEOs, employees, and
shareholders) typically requires less firm resources (Hambrick & Wowak, 2019). As such, it can
easily be utilized as a complement to other constituency building tactics (e.g., corporate
grassroots mobilization). CEOs, employees, and shareholders of firms that conduct constituency
building efforts may be more likely to identify the strategic complementarity of utilizing
corporate activist tactics as a means to enhance their constituency building strategy. They may
also be more likely to ascertain the positive effect that sociopolitical activism can have on public
opinion formation (Chatterji & Toffel, 2019) and the extent to which (positive) media coverage
can influence public opinion (Hayward et al., 2004). When considering this line of reasoning, an
important question for future research comes to mind: To what extent are different forms of
sociopolitical activism utilized as part of a constituency building strategy to induce grassroots
mobilization amongst firm stakeholders?
The examples discussed in this section indicate that future research will need to update
Hillman and Hitt’s (1999) canonical corporate political strategy typology to account for the new
constituency building tactics that have begun to emerge as a result of the proliferation of ICTs in

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constituency building campaigns (i.e., user lobbying) and the advent of corporate activism (in its
various forms) as a potentially complementary nonmarket strategy.

Constituency Building in the International Context

With the rise of nascent market categories and disruptive firms within the home-sharing,
ride-sharing, and micromobility industries (firms like Uber, Lyft, Lime, and Airbnb to name a
few), we are beginning to see an increased diffusion of tech-mediated constituency building
activities (or user lobbying) not just within the US, but across the globe (Uzunca et al., 2018). In
addition to the US, the EU countries of Western Europe have particularly been a relative hotbed
for these corporate constituency building efforts. Whether its Uber mobilizing its drivers in
London or Lime mobilizing its platform users in Germany and France, platform firms with
disruptive business models are utilizing their grassroots stakeholders to forward their political
agenda. Similar constituency building efforts have also been evidenced in Canada, where Uber
successfully amassed over 90,000 signatures in support of ride-sharing within Toronto.
While some of these companies are mobilizing their stakeholders on an as needed or ad
hoc basis, a few have actually begun to do so in a more systematic fashion. Telsa and Airbnb, for
example, are using owners and hosts clubs not just to promote their respective brands, but also as
grassroots lobbying arms. Essentially, these firms have embedded provisions within the bi-laws
of their clubs which state that part of the duties of these entities is to help the given firm advocate
for its political interests by supporting the firm’s legislative efforts. And these entities oftentimes
utilize the technology (e.g., platforms, apps, etc.) of the firms in which they are embedded to
elicit consumer participation in user lobbying campaigns. In the coming years, it will be

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interesting to empirically investigate to what extent, for what reasons, and in what ways this
particular tactic (i.e., user lobbying) is adopted by firms.
Given the global diffusion of constituency building (in general) and user lobbying (in
particular), it is important that constituency building researchers begin to examine the ways in
which this political strategy is being operationalized throughout North America (i.e., the US and
Canada), Europe, and the world at large. It is also essential that we begin to understand the extent
to which firmographic capabilities, in concert with various institutional, cultural, and regulatory
structures, affect the willingness and ability of firms to successfully mobilize their grassroots
stakeholders to advance their political priorities (e.g., Schlichting, 2014; Uzunca et al., 2018).

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, this chapter proposes a comprehensive future research agenda for user
lobbying in particular and constituency building in general. In so doing, it asserts the need for
constituency building scholars and researchers to (1) further ascertain user lobbying and the
implications of ICTs on constituency building, (2) explore the nuances and mechanisms
associated with the corporate grassroots mobilization process, (3) update Hillman and Hitt’s
(1999) Typology of Corporate Constituency Building Tactics (especially following the
emergence of user lobbying), and (4) investigate the ramifications of the internationalization of
constituency building (e.g., user lobbying) on corporate political strategizing and global
democracy. In the next and final chapter, I revisit the contributions of this dissertation to the
general literature on constituency building and the important emerging research agenda on user
lobbying. And I conclude this academic work.

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CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION

The final chapter of this dissertation briefly recaps the development and evolution of the
constituency building research. It reiterates the progress that has been made from the early works
of Baysinger (1984), Baysinger et al. (1985), Keim (1985), Keim et al. (1984), Keim & Zeithaml
(1986), and Sethi (1981) to the more recent scholarship of Walker (2009, 2012, 2014), Hertel-
Fernandez (2016, 2017, 2018), and Jia and Mayer (2016). This chapter reaffirms the promising
areas of research within constituency building that will help to further this essential domain of
academic inquiry. Additionally, it explains the relevance and contributions of constituency
building research to the corporate political strategy literature. Finally, it discusses the importance
of improving cross-disciplinary research collaborations across the fields of sociology, political
science, marketing, public relations, and business ethics. In so doing, it argues that scholars will
substantially advance our understanding of user lobbying (as a constituency building tactic) and
constituency building (as a corporate political tactic).

EVOLUTION OF CONSTITUENCY BUILDING RESEARCH

Over the decades – from the early works of Keim, Baysinger, and Zeithaml (which
helped to establish the constituency building literature) to the brief reemergence of constituency
building research during the early 2000s (on account of the contributions of Lord, Hillman, and
Hitt) to more recent scholarship spanning the fields of strategy, sociology, and political science
(in particular) – there has been a growth and evolution of constituency building scholarship.

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Early research elucidated this nascent political strategy, explaining the role of stakeholders (i.e.,
employees, shareholders, retirees, etc.) in corporate grassroots programs/campaigns, the general
process of corporate grassroots mobilization, and the advantages of this political strategy relative
to others. The research of Lord further explicated the advantages of constituency building (when
compared to lobbying and political contributions), explored the antecedents of this grassroots
political strategy, and helped us to begin considering the implications of ICTs on constituency
building campaigns. While contemporary scholarship has begun to examine the different
approaches to constituency building (i.e., overt/transparent versus astroturfing), individual versus
collective grassroots political campaigns, and the actual effect of ICTs on corporate grassroots
mobilization efforts.
In surveying the existing body of work on constituency building hitherto, we now know
that (from the perspective of legislators and their staffs) constituency building is one of the most
effective ways to politically influence legislators (Baysinger et al., 1985; Hillman & Hitt, 1999;
Keim, 1985; Lord, 2000a). This literature has shown that firms need sincere, credible, deep, and
broad-based grassroots political support to effectively mobilize stakeholders (Lord, 2003), and
that having a large employee (Heath et al., 1995; Hertel-Fernandez, 2016, 2018; Hillman & Hitt,
1999) or customer (Lord, 2003) base is important to effectively implement constituency building.
Scholars have highlighted the importance of firms being able to publicly frame a policy position
in a way that coheres with their target grassroot stakeholder demographic (Murray et al., 2016).
While Walker (2012, 2014), has shown that this political strategy is shaped by a firm’s degree of
direct lobbying, the extent to which a company appears as a customer of a public affairs
consultancy, the degree to which a firm is embroiled in public controversies and protests, and the
industry in which a firm operates. And in related fashion to this dissertation, research has found

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that large tech firms engage in a greater amount of constituency building than firms in other
industries (Walker, 2014).
Having briefly recapped the evolution and development of constituency building research
(over the decades), I now turn my attention to future research. In so doing, I provide a precis of
the agenda that I elaborated in Chapter 4.

PROMISING AREAS OF FUTURE RESEARCH

As I have argued in this work, with the emergence and rapid diffusion of user lobbying,
there has been a resurgence of public (Holburn & Raiha, 2017; Stempeck, 2015; Tusk, 2018) and
scholarly interest (Hertel-Fernandez, 2016, 2017, 2018; Jia & Mayer, 2016; Kingsley et al.,
2012; Walker, 2012, 2014) in constituency building as a political strategy; however, corporate
political strategy scholars have yet to propose a clear trajectory moving forward. To this end,
within this dissertation, I have offered numerous intriguing paths for future research. Below, I
briefly comment on a few of the most promising areas.
First, with the advent of tech-mediated grassroots mobilization (i.e., user lobbying), we
can now track the usage of constituency building tactics by firms via media coverage, as well as
via firms’ social media posts, app and text messages, blog posts, and online protest events.
Essentially, this means that for the first time, we can directly measure corporate constituency
building as opposed to using proxies (e.g., Walker, 2009, 2014) or self-reports from firms,
employees, shareholders, and policy makers (e.g., Baysinger et al., 1985; Heath et al., 1995;
Hertel-Fernandez, 2018). Moreover, numerous states within the US are beginning to develop the
policy infrastructure for regulating corporate constituency building expenditure in a similar
fashion to what they have done with individual corporate political contributions, PAC

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contributions, and corporate spending on lobbying. Some states, like California, Georgia, and
Washington (to name a few), have already begun to publicly account for such grassroots political
expenditure. As this phenomenon continues to develop, researchers will have yet another data
source to draw upon in examining constituency building empirically. However, this latter data
source (in particular) will help researchers in conducting studies that are more causal in nature.
Moreover, using these new empirical approaches, future scholarship will be able to
further tease-out corporate constituency building antecedents. That is, the continued pursuit of
ascertaining why some firms engage in constituency building as a key component of their
political strategy, while others do so much less, and others rarely, if at all (Lord, 2000b). Future
research will be able to further explore the nuances related to the role of firm and environmental
factors (e.g., resources and capabilities, industry regulation, etc.), as well as factors yet to be
explored, in initiating user lobbying and corporate constituency building campaigns (Jia &
Mayer, 2016; Walker, 2014).
In addition, with the rise of disruptive high-growth tech firms or unicorns (e.g., Airbnb,
Eaze, Lime, Tesla, Uber, etc.), we are seeing an increased diffusion of constituency building
(e.g., user lobbying) across the globe. As has been mentioned, the EU countries of Western
Europe have particularly been a relative hotbed for these efforts. Given the global diffusion of
this phenomenon, examining the effect of institutional, cultural, and regulatory factors on
constituency building usage across nations is a promising area of future scholarly inquiry.
Furthermore, exploring the moral implications of these corporate organized grassroots political
campaigns across diverse institutional environments (e.g., national, cultural, etc.) is an important
future area of scholarly examination.

141
CONTRIBUTIONS

This dissertation contributes to the constituency building, corporate political strategy, and
nonmarket strategy literatures in three important ways. It provides the first comprehensive
review of the constituency building literature. As such, it accounts for the historical development
of the research on this specific corporate political strategy across the social science disciplines of
management/strategy, sociology, political science, marketing, and public relations. It highlights
the unfortunate reality that scholarly research on this important political strategy is substantially
behind the attention it receives within traditional media, social media, and throughout society.
This dissertation introduces and explores the emergence of user lobbying – a nascent
form of tech-mediated constituency building (or corporate grassroots political mobilization)
prominent amongst high-growth tech startups. In so doing, it demonstrates the extent to which
entrepreneurial ventures are now able to organize and employ constituency building campaigns,
similar to their larger incumbent counterparts. This important development captured within this
dissertation is just the tip of the iceberg as it pertains to the involvement of small/nascent
entrepreneurial ventures in constituency building campaigns. Anecdotal evidence has begun to
emerge that some very small/nascent enterprises are politically mobilizing their stakeholders
through social media channels to insulate themselves from local regulation.
Lastly, building on its comprehensive review of the constituency building literature and
its investigation of the antecedents of user lobbying amongst high-growth technology startups,
this dissertation provides a comprehensive future research agenda for the constituency building
literature (as one of three important corporate political strategies) and user lobbying (as one of
the most recent and preeminent corporate constituency building tactics).

142
IMPORTANCE OF IMPROVING CROSS-DISCIPLINARY RESEARCH

As the literature review within this dissertation (i.e., Chapter 2) has implied, early
research on corporate constituency building (within the area of strategy) was inspired by research
within the discipline of political science. Since that period, researchers in the disciplines of
sociology, political science, marketing, and public relations have contributed to our knowledge
of this political strategy and its related tactics. Whilst the most recent reinvigoration and
advances in constituency building research are attributable to scholars of sociology and political
science.
However, when examining this diverse academic literature on constituency building, very
few of these studies (reviewed herein) have been conducted by a team of researchers from
different social science fields/disciplines. This lack of cross-disciplinary fertilization has only
impaired us from developing a deeper comprehension of the nuances and intricacies inherent in
this relatively understudied corporate political strategy.
Hence, one major purpose of this dissertation is to promulgate the call for corporate
political strategy scholars and students (in particular), and social science researchers (in general),
to initiate cooperative inter-disciplinary collaborations to pool our collective institutional,
financial, and knowledge-based resources together to advance this increasingly important and
prominent area of scholarship.

CONCLUSION

To conclude, as firms around the world continue to adopt constituency building as part of
their political repertoire, the body of knowledge on this political strategy will have to continue to
proliferate to keep up with this development. At the same time, as globalization intensifies in

143
some respects and wanes in others, this phenomenon will have direct implications on the ways in
which foreign and domestic firms – as well as incumbents and entrepreneurial ventures – across
various institutional environments, engage their stakeholders in order to forward their business
interests. Whatever the future has in-store, this is a very invigorating time to be studying the
evolution of constituency building as a corporate political strategy.

144
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract User lobbying—defined as a technology-mediated approach to constituency building, wherein firms employ information communications technologies (ICTs) to politically mobilize their customers and/or platform users to advance their public and/or regulatory policy interests—is an important and growing phenomenon that has recently emerged upon the corporate political scene. In illuminating this emergent tech-mediated constituency building tactic, this dissertation conducts the first comprehensive review of the constituency building literature, accounting for the historical development of the research on this specific corporate political strategy across various disciplines (i.e., strategy, sociology, political science, marketing, and public relations). It also highlights the extent to which academic work in this domain substantially lags behind the attention that this political strategy continues to garner both within traditional and social media, as well as throughout society. Second, this dissertation explores the prominence and antecedents associated with user lobbying amongst approximately 300 high-growth tech startups (i.e., unicorns) headquartered in the United States. My findings from this novel dataset – which comprises print media coverage of user lobbying campaigns – indicate that approximately 40 of the unicorns in my sample have utilized user lobbying at least once since their inception and that disruptive, sharing economy, and platform-based ventures are more likely to employ this tactic than their counterparts not possessing these characteristics. Third, building on its comprehensive review of the constituency building literature and its examination of the antecedents of user lobbying amongst high-performing tech startups, this work provides a comprehensive future research agenda for the literatures on user lobbying and constituency building.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Murphy, Maurice J. (author)

Core Title User lobbying amongst high-growth tech startups: the next evolution of constituency building

School Marshall School of Business

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Business Administration

Degree Conferral Date 2022-05

Publication Date 04/18/2022

Defense Date 03/02/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag corporate constituency building,corporate grassroots mobilization,corporate political strategy,OAI-PMH Harvest,social movements,user lobbying

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Fiss, Peer (committee chair), Jia, Nan (committee chair), Graham, Benjamin (committee member), Mayer, Kyle (committee member), Walker, Edward (committee member)

Creator Email maurice.murphy.phd@marshall.usc.edu,mauricjm@marshall.usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC111004383

Unique identifier UC111004383

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Murphy, Maurice J.

Type texts

Source 20220418-usctheses-batch-928 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

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